Neurotrack, the startup that won the health prize at this year’s SXSW, has pulled in a round of seed funding, according to a Form D filing.

The $90,000 boost from angel investors is the first outside capital for the company with a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease.

CEO Elli Kaplan is aiming her life’s work at Alzheimer’s and related disorders. “I watched two of my grandparents die ‘alone’ because they could no longer remember their family members who were sitting at their bedsides,” she said.

Neurotrack’s test is bolstered by 25 years of neuroscience research. Millions of dollars from foundations and grants have already been poured into the technology, which was developed by researchers at Emery University.

The company offers a computer-based cognitive test that can detect an impairment on the Hippocampus, the first structure in the brain to be impacted by Alzheimer’s. The program evaluates patients’ eye movement — and the time spent looking at familiar and new images.

Related: The founders launched the company at DEMO — read the full VentureBeat story here.

Kaplan was impressed by the technology, which she claims could predict patients with a high risk of Alzheimer’s up to six years prior to the onset of the disease. So Neurotrack licensed it and is beginning to commercialize the test by selling to pharmaceutical companies.

“The biggest issue that pharma companies have is populating clinical trials with people who are pre-symptomatic,” said Kaplan. To develop drugs to treat Alzheimer’s, they need access to patients before irreparable damage is done.

The Alzheimer’s Association reports that about 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s – and that number is expected to rise to 16 million by 2050. But Kaplan is convinced that we’ll someday develop a drug that can cure the disease.

For now, informed patients can make lifestyle changes (exercising more, adapting eating habits) and take medication to delay the onset of the disease. “We know that some of the symptom-treating drugs are more effective the earlier you can start them,” said Kaplan.

Results from the most recent research is very promising — according to Kaplan, the participants who scored below 50 percent on the test have all received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis within six years. None of those scoring above 67 on the test have converted to Alzheimer’s. Ninety-two people participated in the study.

Neurotrack isn’t ready for the public yet — but if and when it becomes available, Kaplan said, people in their 50s will get tested every year. Patients with a family history of Alzheimer’s may receive the test earlier.

Kaplan would not yet disclose pricing information for the test when it becomes available. The company is in the midst of fundraising for its next round and is still fleshing out its go-to-market strategy. It is a graduate of Rock Health Boston, which has a strong relationship with venture firm Kleiner Perkins, and first launched at DEMO.

Top image of the founders at DEMO via Flickr

Intel and the Oregon Health & Science University are teaming up on a supercomputing project to speed up analysis of human genetic profiles, which could help with personalized treatment for cancer.

The goal for the multiyear partnership is to make genetic analysis a routine part of patient care.

“We are generating an enormous amount of data, which has historically been unmanageable,” said Joe Gray, a research director at OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute, in an interview.

Gray envisions that the project will involve a “lot of back and forth” between geneticists, engineers, and biomedical scientists before they can map the human genome to identify the mutations that lead to cancer.

Such a map would provide a better understanding of an individual’s genetic makeup, so biomedical engineers can cancer treatment that kills only the mutating cells, not the healthy ones.

It sounds simple, but Gray’s project is grappling with delivering the right kind of computer power for a project of this scale. “We are talking about a terabyte of data per patient that describes the molecular architecture of a disease,” he explained. If this is extended to millions of patients a year, it’s an awful lot of data.

Researchers will use Intel’s Xeon E5 HPC CPU, which offers Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and Intel Node Manager Server power-management technology.

Aside from the technology, which is steadily evolving to manage this volume of data, the other challenge is an ethical one.

“Privacy is a clear issue, and the data needs to be handled confidentially,” said Gray. When asked about whether the data will be stripped of any personally identifiable information, Gray admits to another “gray area.” Our DNA is like a molecular blueprint — theoretically, it is possible to match and reestablish a patient’s identity without having a direct link.

But the partnership with Intel is designed to explore the architectures best suited to deal with this data, and tackle ethical issues at a later date. The more immediate goal is to identify a number of challenging biomedical projects, and to experiment with hundreds of hardware and software packages.

An example of a project is tracking a typical cancer tumor through its thousands of genomic changes. “Some of them are important in the way that the disease responds to therapy,” said Gray. The team intends to build computer algorithms to predict how best to manage the disease as it progresses.

This isn’t the only partnership between a technology company and medical institution; Illumina and Life Technologies Corp recently announced rival Boston-based clinical genomics initiatives.

“Our joint team plans to do research not only into the mutations but also the ‘circuitry’ that enables malignant cells to spread,” Intel’s general manager for health care Eric Dishman, noted in a blog post. “The ultimate hope here is to learn how, for a specific individual, this circuitry can be “turned off” to stop the spread of cancer cells.”

Dishman, recently had his genome sequenced when recovering from a kidney transplant.

“It, too, took weeks of computing and then months upon months of analysis to make sense of my own unique case,” he concluded. “Today, these tools are too slow, too expensive and too rare—I want to make sure everyone has access to the kind of customized care that I lucked into.”

Curious to learn more? We’ll be inviting world leading geneticists to delve into the tricky, ethical issues at HealthBeat, our health care conference on May 20 & 21 in San Francisco. 

Scientific researcher image via Shutterstock

In its most recent funding plan, the People’s Republic of China has invested around $186 million in health-related technologies, including molecular, biochemical, immunological, and physical diagnostics and sensors as well as medical technology research.

Third-party firm Lux Research said this investment is spurred by a quickly aging population and the lack of a strong, domestic health industry.

Rather than continuing to rely on Western R&D, medicine, and equipment, Lux says China is shifting its strategies to create novel solutions tailored to meet the needs of non-Caucasian populations, especially when it comes to genomic research and drugs. The result is an emerging diagnostic landscape, funded by government and driven by lengthy research programs at universities.

“Sensor and diagnostic technology development in China is relatively immature, with the current market structure dominated by Western companies and multinationals,” writes Lux analyst Zhihao Yu in a summary of the firm’s full report.

“We see increasing research and investment in the form of research grants to clusters of universities and research institutes to look at biochemical, molecular, immunological, and physical based methods for diagnostics. While the commercial landscape itself is immature, the need for a robust diagnostics and sensors market for China is acute, and we predict rapid ramp up in the near future.”

Image credit: Gwoeii/Shutterstock

Cloud care is free.

Half of cloud deployments are insecure and vulnerable to attack, and a third are not properly set up to maintain service if Amazon Web Services has downtime, says cloud optimization company Newvem. Which is why Newvem is releasing a free version of its analytics product to pinpoint problems in small and medium-sized business’s clouds.

A sample Newvem report

“We’re just amazed at how exposed many small and medium-sized customers of Amazon are,” Newvem CEO Zev Laderman told me yesterday from Tel Aviv.

The free services that Newvem will now offer include emergency triage, activity diagnostics, and cost efficiency reports. The reports will highlight security risks, show where companies can improve availability options in case of Amazon cloud issues, point out where backups are needed, and expose situations in which companies can resize their cloud usage and potentially move to a lower service level to save money.

Newvem tracks almost $250 million in Amazon EC2 usage annually and has 1,500 cloud clients who use its services to manage their increasingly sophisticated — and complex — cloud deployments. Enterprise clients and heavy cloud users get more trend analysis, can separate cloud usage by business group, get better Amazon reserved instance tracking and S3 analysis, which shows what storage capacity they have and what they’re actually using.

“The big guys who spend over $1,00,000 … they have everything they want,” Laderman says. “But the small and medium guys, there’s a big gap.”

This new product, Cloud Care, is aimed solidly at those small and medium guys, who might spend $1,000 to $5,000 a month on Amazon. Based on Amazon Web Services’ projected 2013 revenue of around $3 billion, that group likely consists of about 3,500 businesses that are using, but not necessarily optimizing, the cloud.

Amazon delivers its cloud services with what it calls a “shared responsibility” model. The problem is that the small and medium users don’t have the same level of resources as the big boys to devote full-time staff to ensuring they keep up with their side.

A sample report from Newvem

photo credit: bitzcelt via photopin cc

• Stent maker IDev Tech raises $25M (VentureWire)
• Xytis gets $15M for brain-injury drugs (VentureWire)
• Diagnostic maker Iris Biotech plans to go public, launch breast-cancer test (Edgar)
• RiverVest Venture Partners raises $75M life-science fund (release)
• Concentric Medical names Maria Sainz CEO (release)

[Note: I'm a little sad to announce that this will be my last life-science briefing at VentureBeat, although with luck, it won't be the end of my time here. Starting Monday, I'll be blogging regularly on the drug industry and healthcare over at BNET Industries, a new CNET venture, so drop by if you can. (Preparing for that move is the main reason non-briefing posts have been scarce recently.) I still hope to post here occasionally as well, since covering below-the-radar startups has been a blast, and I'm not ready to give it up quite yet.

It's been a great year -- my first VentureBeat post was on April 3, 2007 -- and I want to thank Matt for the opportunity to join you here, and all our regular readers and commenters for your time and your insights. As journalists, we're only as good as our sources and readers, and you guys have helped in countless ways to make me look much smarter than I really am. --D.P.H.]

Stent maker IDev Tech raises $25M – IDev Technologies, a Houston medical-device startup, raised $25 million in a third funding round, VentureWire reports. The company is developing a new type of stent for use in propping open the liver’s bile ducts .

The company’s existing investors, a group that includes Bay City Capital, Heron Capital, PTB Sciences and RiverVest Venture Partners, provided the funding. IDev had previously raised $24 million, according to VW.

Xytis gets $15M for brain-injury drugs – Irvine, Calif.-based Xytis, a biotech focused on disorders of the central nervous system, raised $15 million in an extension of its second funding round, VentureWire reports. Its backers included Atlas Venture, CDC Innovation, Sanderling Ventures and Ventech.

The company says it was founded in 2005 from the merger of Xytis Pharmaceuticals and Remergent. (Sounds more to me like Xytis swallowed Remergent, but they’re free to describe it however they’d like.) Its lead drug candidate, XY2405, blocks a cellular protein called the Bradykinin B2 receptor, a signaling molecule thought to promote inflammation.

Xytis is testing the drug as a potential treatment for traumatic brain injury; the molecule is currently in mid-stage, phase II trials. The company is also testing an antidepressant in early-stage trials.

Xytis raised half the money last August, then received the second $7.5 million in April, the company told VentureWire. It has previously raised $24.5 million in its current incarnation, and its “predecessor companies” pulled in $6.5 million.

Diagnostic maker Iris Biotech plans to go public, launch breast-cancer test – Santa Clara, Calif.-based Iris Biotechnologies, a developer of molecular diagnostic tests, is preparing to go public, VentureWire reports. The company plans a small offering on the OTC Bulletin Board — if I’m reading its latest SEC filing correctly, its existing shareholders will raise about $1.1 million, with no proceeds headed to the company  — and hopes to launch a breast-cancer test later this year.

Iris plans to use chips to measure gene activity in breast cancer, with the hope of predicting the odds that a surgically removed tumor will recur and, eventually, helping patients and doctors customize cancer treatment from an early stage. The company claims that it will be competitive with Genomic Health and Agendia, two companies with similar tests for predicting breast-cancer recurrence.

There’s something a little odd about Iris’ disclosures in the SEC forms, though. Iris doesn’t describe its technology, the genes it will test or how it settled on them in any detail, and spends almost as much time talking about its database of patient information and related computer technology as it does about its tests. While it may consider some or all of that information a trade secret — and disclosure requirements may well be looser for such a small offering — it’s still kind of unusual for a startup to ask outside investors to put up their money essentially on faith.

• AGI Dermatics takes in $5M for skincare products (release)
• Myconostica raises £3.9 for fungal diagnostics (GenomeWeb)
  
• Germany’s Noxxon gets €1M grant for aptamer drugs (release)

AGI Dermatics takes in $5M for skincare products – Freeport, N.Y.-based AGI Dermatics, a startup concentrated on skincare products, raised $5 million in a new funding round. Investors included Trevi Health Ventures and Spring Mountain Capital.

AGI makes cosmetic ingredients and is working on developing topical pharmaceutical lotions as well. Its leading drug candidate is called T4N5 Liposome Lotion, which AGI says includes a DNA-repair enzyme intended to repair ultraviolet damage to the skin. The company is currently testing the product as a preventive treatment for skin cancer.

Germany’s Noxxon gets €1M grant for aptamer drugs — Noxxon, a German biotech aiming to make drugs from nucleic-acid snippets called aptamers, received a grant from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The €1 million ($1.6 million) grant is intended to support Noxxon’s drug-discovery program, which we covered at greater length last May.

Myconostica raises £3.9M for fungal diagostics – Myconostica, a U.K. biotech that spun out of the University of Manchester, raised £3.9 million ($7.7 million) in a third funding round, GenomeWeb reports. Investors included Amphion Innovations, Nexus Medical Partners, and Innoven Partenaires.

The company is working on rapid diagnostic tests for life-threatening fungal infections. Its first product is a test for several types of fungal infection that is nearing approval in Europe, and which Myconostica thinks could receive U.S. approval by the fourth quarter.

• OptiMedica takes in $16M for eye-treatment lasers (release)
• Genome analyzer BioNanomatrix raises $5M (release)
• Heart diagnostic startup Aviir gets another $1.5M (VBLS exclusive)
• Pharmaca, integrative-pharmacy chain, draws $20M (release)
• LifeWatch, cardiac-monitoring device maker, withdraws IPO (IPOhome)
• Jerry DeVries, Steven Whitlock join PTV Sciences as venture partners (VentureWire)

OptiMedica takes in $16M for eye-treatment lasers – OptiMedica, a Santa Clara, Calif., medical-device maker, raised $16 million in a third funding round. Investors included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Alloy Ventures and DAG Ventures.

The startup makes and sells an eye-treatment laser system called Pascal — the acronym stands for “pattern scan laser” — which is approved for treating of retinal diseases such as diabetic retinopathy and other conditions involving the abnormal growth of blood vessels that can leak and obscure vision. The laser works by “photocoagulation,” which simply means it burns and fuses tissue at the point of focus — sealing off blood vessels, for instance, healing tears in the retina or even reattaching a retina that’s come loose.

Genome analyzer BioNanomatrix raises $5M – This item is now a standalone post here.

Heart diagnostic startup Aviir gets another $1.5M – Palo Alto, Calif.-based Aviir, a biotech focused on heart diagnostics, raised an additional $1.5 million as a follow-on to its second funding round, the company’s chief operating officer, Avi Kulkarni, said. The money is an equity investment related to a still-undisclosed partnership with a large pharmaceutical company, he told me.

Aviir is still in stealth mode, as we noted last year when we first wrote about its use of Stanford technology for detection and monitoring of cardiovascular disease. Kulkarni did offer a few additional details, telling me, for instance, that the company’s name is actually an acronym that stands for “atherosclerotic venous inflammation and insulin resistance.”

That, plus the fact that Aviir is working on what Kulkarni said is a “multiple biomarker panel assay” for heart disease, suggests to me that the company plans on measuring the levels of various proteins, probably from blood, in order to get a more precise picture of stressors such as inflammation and insulin resistance that might lead to heart problems. (“Insulin resistance” is an interesting choice, since that’s the cause — or the effect, perhaps — of type 2 diabetes, which is also linked to heart trouble.)

Aviir raised $11.5 million of a planned $25 million round last September, it disclosed in an SEC form now available online (PDF link) via the California Department of Corporations. The remainder of that round will become available when the company hits unspecified milestones.

For a look at the sort of thing Aviir is probably working on, check out this 2007 paper from Physiological Genomics, in which a research team from Stanford and Aviir detail the use of inflammatory proteins known as chemokines to identify patients with atherosclerosis. On the more whimsical side, a self-described friend of the company’s founders describes what he knows about Aviir on his blog, and also posts a odd homemade video “commercial” that suggests the company will be predicting lifetime disease risks for infants.

• Paris-based Stentys takes $18M for “bifurcated” stents (release)
• Blood analyzer IntelliDx raises $22M (PDF release)
• Cancer-test biotech Calderome changes name to VeraCyte (VentureWire)
• Predictive Biosciences names Peter Klemm as CEO (release)

Paris-based Stentys takes $18M for “bifurcated” stents – Stentys, a Paris-based medical device maker, raised $18 million in a second funding round. The company is developing “bifurcated” stents intended to prop open clogged arteries at blood-vessel junctions.

The startup said the funding will allow it to complete clinical trials of its stents and to win European regulatory approval for them. Stentys doesn’t seem to have given any indication whether or when it might seek approval in the U.S. or other markets as well.

Scottish Equity Partners and Sofinnova Partners provided the funding.

Blood analyzer IntelliDx raises $22M –It’s starting to look like Diabetes Week here at VentureBeat LifeScience.

IntelliDx (no Web site), a Boston Santa Clara, Calif., startup with a new type of blood-sugar analyzer for hospitalized diabetics, raised $21.5 million in a fourth funding round (PDF link). Investors included HLM Venture Partners, 3i Ventures, Giza Ventures, Ascend Ventures, Aurum Ventures, Sequel Venture Partners and Hunt BioVentures.

IntelliDx makes a chemical sensor-based blood analyzer for use in hospital intensive-care units. Much like the Luminous Medical spectroscopic blood-glucose analyzer we covered yesterday, the IntelliDx device aims to monitor blood sugar hourly in diabetic patients. The idea, again, is to keep a closer eye on hyperglycemia in a critical-care setting, since runaway blood glucose often increases the chance of complications and lengthier hospital stays.

Cancer-test biotech Calderome changes name to VeraCyte – Calderome, a stealthy cancer-test startup in South San Francisco, has changed its name to VeraCyte (no Web site), VentureWire reports. The new name presumably reflects the company’s focus on cell-based cancer diagnostics, as we described last week.

The VentureWire story goes on to reprise VeraCyte’s $12 million fundraising, which we also covered last week. VeraCyte has two employees, and recently extended job offers to three other individuals, the news service reported.

CORRECTED: The IntelliDx item initially located the company in Boston, not Santa Clara. The company’s release was datelined Boston because it originated with HLM Ventures. Apologies for the error.

• Luminous Medical raises $24M for automated glucose monitoring (release)
• Alimera Sciences gets $30M for eye-disease drug (release)
• Vaccine maker LigoCyte draws $28M (release)
• Heartbeat tracker CardioNet trims IPO, aims for listing today (IPOhome)
• Axial Biotech takes in $6M for spinal diagnostics (release)
• Insulin bioengineer enGene receives $6.4M (release)
• GlucoLight raises funding for, well, glucose monitoring (release)
• Germany’s InflaRx gets seed funding for sepsis work (release)
• Cell imager Amnis pulls in $3.5M (VentureWire)
• Korea Bone Bank gets funding for bone transplants (release)

Luminous Medical raises $24M for automated glucose monitoring – Carlsbad, Calif.-based Luminous Medical, a medical-device maker, raised $23.5 million in a second funding round. Investors included Adams Street Partners, RiverVest Venture Partners, Finistere Ventures, De Novo Ventures and Latterell Venture Partners.

Luminous is developing an automated blood-sugar sensor for diabetic patients being treated in hospital intensive-care units and operating rooms. According to the company, keeping a tight rein on blood-glucose levels, which can soar or crash unexpectedly in diabetics, helps prevent complications while shortening hospital stays and reducing the risk of death.

Measuring such tight control, however, typically requires manually checking blood-glucose levels every 30 to 60 minutes, the company says. The Luminous device, by contrast, uses infrared spectroscopy — a technique that identifies particular molecules by measuring which wavelengths of light they absorb — to measure glucose and other blood chemicals non-invasively.

The company licensed its technology from InLight Solutions of Albuquerque, N.M., which previously invested $60 million in the technology. The device has not been approved by the FDA.

Axial Biotech takes in $6M for spinal diagnostics – Axial Biotech, a Salt Lake City diagnostic-test maker, raised $6 million as part of its second funding round. Investors included Johnson & Johnson Development, vSpring Capital and Ohio Biotech Group.

Axial, founded in 2002 by a group of spinal surgeons and geneticists, is an odd hybrid of biotech and devices. The company aims to produce tests that will predict and measure the severity of spinal problems such as scoliosis, as well as unspecified “motion-preserving technologies” — presumably an alternative to the stigmatizing back braces that orthopedists have long inflicted on children with the condition.

Insulin bioengineer enGene receives $6.4M – Canada’s enGene, a Vancouver biotech looking for ways to jump-start natural insulin production in diabetics, raised $6.4 million in a first round of funding. Investors included Saad Investments, Masa Life Science Ventures and private investors.

EnGene has an audacious — which is to say, of course, also quite chancy — approach to diabetes, in which the immune system attacks and kills insulin-producing “beta cells” in the pancreas (type 1 diabetes) or the body grows desensitized to insulin and requires higher levels (type 2 diabetes). In either case, patients often require insulin shots to maintain blood-sugar levels necessary or proper metabolism.

EnGene proposes to engineer cells in the small intestine — known as “K cells” — to produce insulin themselves. The advantage of this technique lies in the fact that K cells, like beta cells, respond to sugar levels in the gut, although they normally secrete a separate molecule. Once bioengineered to produce insulin as well, these cells could help regulate blood sugar automatically much the way beta cells normally do.

Of course, gene therapy has, in general, been a great disappointment so far, so there’s no shortage of uncertainty associated with this sort of technique. EnGene has tested its technique in mice, but not yet in humans. The startup plans to seek a second round of funding in the second half.

Alimera Sciences gets $30M for eye-disease drug – Alimera Sciences, an Alpharetta, Ga., drug developer with a focus on eye disease, raised $30 million in a third funding round. The company will now take a majority stake in its drug for diabetic macular edema, a vision-degrading complication of diabetes, which Alimera is developing with its partner pSividia.

We’ve written before about Alimera, which is presumably still contemplating an IPO this fall. All five of the company’s existing VC backers participated in the round: BA Venture Partners, Domain Associates, Intersouth Partners, Polaris Venture Partners and Venrock Associates.

Vaccine maker LigoCyte draws $28M – LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals, a Bozeman, Mont., biotech focused on new vaccines against infectious disease, raised $28 million in a third funding round. Investors included Forward Ventures, JAFCO, Novartis Venture Fund, Fidelity Biosciences, MedImmune Ventures, Athenian Venture Partners and MC Life Sciences Ventures.

The company is developing new vaccines using “virus-like particles” — usually structural viral proteins, minus the replication machinery packed in DNA or RNA — against gastroenteritis, anthrax and flu. It is also working on antibody drugs against inflammatory disease.

• Cantimer takes in $2M for dehydration diagnostics (VentureWire)
• Recodagen launches, takes aim at cancer (release)
• Juniper Diagnostics spins out of ChemSensing (VentureWire)

Cantimer takes in $2M for dehydration diagnostics –The mystery of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Cantimer has resolved a bit. We wrote about this stealthy company back in December and reached the conclusion that the company was developing a particular type of nanosensor intended to identify water levels in human tissue.

Now VentureWire reports that Cantimer is doing just that, using a polymer-based sensor for measuring dehydration in saliva. The company plans to market the device in sports medicine and pediatric and elderly care as well as to hospitals and emergency rooms.

The startup also just raised $2 million in a first funding round. AWT Private Investments and angel investors provided the cash.

Recodagen launches, takes aim at cancer – Recodagen (no Web site), a newly launched Seattle biotech working on new cancer drugs, raised an undisclosed sum in a first funding round. The sum falls in the $2 million to $5 million range, according to John Cook’s blog.

Investors included Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Amgen Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, OVP Venture Partners and WRF Capital.

Recodagen was incubated by Seattle’s Accelerator. The company’s technology originated at Washington State University.

Juniper Diagnostics spins out of ChemSensing with new funding– ChemSensing, a Champaign, Ill., developer of sensor arrays, is spinning out Juniper Diagnostics to commercialize its technology for detecting bacteria via breath, VentureWire reports. The new startup will launch with a multi-million-dollar funding round provided by Mariner Equity Management and ChemSensing.

Juniper’s technology involves panels of reactive dyes that change color in response to chemical exposure — in this case, to gases emitted by certain classes of bacteria in the breath of patients with tuberculosis or pneumonia. The company expects that FDA approval of the device may take 18 months to two years.

• Affinergy gets $3M in grants for biological “linkers” (release)
• Specialty pharma EUSA raises $50M, spends $23M for public biotech Cytogen (release)
• Calderome takes in $12M for cancer diagnostics (peHUB)
• Pulse Health raises $2M for handheld free-radical device (release)
  
• LifeMasters takes in $15M for wellness, disease-management programs (release)
• Dubai Techno Park launched $300MVC fund for life sciences, other sectors (release)

Affinergy gets $3M in grants for biological “linkers” – Affinergy, a Duke University spinout in Research Triangle Park, N.C., received grants worth more than $3 milllion to support development of biological “linker” molecules with potential uses in coatings for medical devices and the development of new therapeutics. The grants were awarded by the federal National Institutes of Health through its small-business innovation research program.

The startup is developing biological molecules that can selectively bind various substances to particular surfaces. Such linkage molecules could, for instance, attach healing growth factors to surgical meshes or other implanted biomaterials or help target drugs at particular cell-surface proteins. The company hasn’t described its goals in much detail, although it said one of the grants is for work aimed at accelerating a patient’s natural healing process.

Specialty pharma EUSA raises $50M, spends $23M for public biotech Cytogen – In today’s man-bites-dog news, the venture-backed specialty pharma EUSA Pharma agreed to acquire the publicly traded biotech Cytogen for $22.6 million. The EUSA release is here; Cytogen has its own release here.

In one sense, the news isn’t terribly surprising, as Cytogen effectively put itself up for sale last November when it announced it was “reviewing strategic alternatives.” The twist here is that EUSA is taking the biotech private — a sign of just how far Cytogen’s fortunes have fallen since the heady days of the 1999-2000 biotech bubble, when its stock almost touched $200 a share. EUSA, which has offices in Doylestown, Pa., and Oxford, England, is offering 62 cents a share, a 35 percent premium over Cytogen’s closing price yesterday of 46 cents.

On the business front, however, it’s hard to say that the combination will be much more exciting than either company has been individually. Both EUSA and Cytogen traffic in a range of largely unrelated drugs for pain and cancer treatment.

EUSA raised $50 million to finance the cash transaction, for working capital and to restructure Cytogen. Investors included TVM Capital, Essex Woodlands, 3i, Goldman Sachs, Advent Venture Partners, SV Life Sciences, NeoMed and NovaQuest.

Calderome takes in $12M for cancer diagnostics – Calderome (no Web site), a South San Francisco, Calif., developer of cancer diagnostics, has taken in $11.9 million of a $23 million first funding round, peHUB reports. (peHUB identifies the company as located in Menlo Park, Calif., but two Calderome job postings on Biospace indicate its headquarters are actually in South San Francisco.)

In fact, I’m loving job listings at the moment, because the company also advertised one of those positions on Craigslist here. According to that listing:

Calderome, Inc. is an early stage cancer diagnostics company addressing the emerging opportunities in personalized medicine. The Company’s strategic vision is to develop a novel molecular cytology approach to improve the diagnosis of cancer, saving patients thousands of unnecessary surgeries every year. The company has spent the last year validating its business model with key stakeholders: physicians, patients and payers and has recently closed a significant round of private equity financing with premier venture capital investors….

In other words, it sounds very much like the company is developing a cell-based diagnostic, possibly involving a test that can pick up tumor cells that circulate in the bloodstream, that can help diagnose cancer without the need for invasive biopsies. That’s merely speculation, however.

Investors in the round include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, TPG Biotechnology Partners and Versant Ventures.

• Allegro pulls in $4M for lung-cancer molecular diagnostics (release)
• Ocular bandage developer I-Therapeutix raises $6M (Mass High Tech)
• NanoBio gets last of $30M for skin-infection drugs (release)
• Cayenne Medical raises $15M for sports medicine (release)
• Aridis Pharma seeks $10M for oral-form drugs and vaccines (VentureWire)
• Neurosurgical device maker Nfocus Neuro acquires StarFire Medical (release)

Allegro pulls in $4M for lung-cancer molecular diagnostics – Boston’s Allegro Diagnostics, a biotech developing molecular diagnostics for lung cancer, raised $4 million in a first funding round. Investors included Kodiak Venture Partners, Catalyst Health Ventures and Boston University.

Allegro is commercializing gene-expression tests based on technology developed by two BU researchers, Jerome Brody and Avrum Spira. The company’s Web site and release don’t describe its technology in further detail. Allegro says the funding will allow it to begin human testing of its diagnostic.

Ocular bandage developer I-Therapeutix raises $6M – I-Therapeutix, a Waltham, Mass., device maker focused on using hydrogels as “liquid bandages” for ocular surgeries, expects to close a $6 million second funding round this month, Mass High Tech reports. Investors included Versant Ventures, SV Life Sciences, Pinnacle Ventures and angel investors.

Founded in 2006, I-Therapeutix plans to begin clinical trials of its hydrogel sealant in cataract surgery in the second quarer of this year. The product, called I-Zip, will be compared to ordinary corneal bandages. Ultimately, the startup plans to develop the hydrogel as a mechanism for delivering drugs directly to the eye.

Aridis Pharma seeks $10M for oral-form drugs and vaccines – Aridis Pharmaceuticals, a San Jose, Calif., drug and vaccine developer, aims to raise up to $10 million in a first funding round, VentureWire reports. The company was founded in 2003 by former executives of Aviron, which was acquired by MedImmune in 2002.

Aridis is working to stabilize drugs and vaccines that would otherwise require injections so that they can be delivered via inhalation or swallowing. Its lead candidates include a rotavirus vaccine, an antibody for cystic fibrosis and a new type of antibiotic.

Neurosurgical device maker Nfocus Neuro acquires StarFire Medical – Nfocus Neuromedical, a Palo Alto, Calif., device maker focused on treating hemorrhagic stroke, acquired StarFire Medical, a developer of minimally invasive devices for treating problems in the blood vessels serving the brain. The companies didn’t divulge financial details.

StarFire makes and sells balloon catheters for treating brain-vessel fistulas and aneurysms, both blood-vessel defects that can lead to uncontrolled bleeding. Nfocus makes a different type of device for treating these defects, although it doesn’t appear to have disclosed much about its particular approach.

NanoBio gets last of $30M for skin-infection drugs – NanoBio, an Ann Arbor, Mich., biotech developing new anti-infective drugs, raised the final $10 million of a $30 million equity funding that appears to be the company’s first. Perseus provided the funding. NanoBio’s lead compounds address herpes cold sores and nail fungus.

Another one bites the dust.

The saga of Precision Therapeutics, a Pittsburgh biotech developing what struck me last August as a particularly crude type of cancer-chemotherapy diagnostic, continues apace. In a tersely worded press release, the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, Oracle Healthcare Acquisition said it has terminated its planned merger with Precision. The release blamed “currently prevailing market conditions” for the decision, which carries some fairly ominous consequences for both sides.

Oracle’s plight is fairly simple: The blank-check company will now dissolve itself and return the money it raised, minus expenses, to investors. For Precision, however, the outlook is much starker. The merger would not only have taken the company public, it would have left Precision with $120 million in cash, ample resources to bolster sales of its ChemoFx test and to develop new potential products.

Now, after getting jilted at the altar by Oracle and withdrawing its IPO, the startup is most likely almost out of cash. As of September 30, Precision had only $15.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and a working-capital deficit of $1.1 million against debts of $17 million — plus a burn rate of roughly $3 million a quarter. Those numbers don’t look good by any measure

The first real sign the merger was in trouble came just about two weeks ago, when Oracle and Precision effectively cut the overall size of the deal by 15 percent — never a good sign. Oracle’s decision to walk away remains murky to me given the complexity of the deal, and external market events might have somehow triggered provisions that made the acquisition untenable. But I can’t help wondering if the buyers may have simply concluded that Precision’s prospects weren’t at all what they once thought.

For more on these special-purpose acquisition outfits and their adventures in life science, see our coverage here.

UPDATE: Tom Salemi at the In Vivo blog has more:

A majority of the investors who buy into the SPAC through an initial public offering must approve of the merger. In deciding how to vote, investors must weigh whether or not they’d be better off cashing out now rather than letting their bets ride on a company like Precision Therapeutics.

In fact, according to Oracle’s annual filing, any shareholder that voted against the merger stood to receive roughly $8 for each of their shares if they were outvoted and the deal went through. To us, the question would appear to be simple. Were investors better off taking the $8 for their share or rolling the dice with shares in the new Precision Therapeutics shares?

Given the recent performance of IPOs, IN VIVO Blog is guessing the $8 was looking pretty good to Oracle investors.

• Precision Thera merger with “blank check” Oracle Healthcare collapses (release)
• Sleep Solutions takes in $21M for sleep-apnea diagnostics (release)
• Trevena takes in $24M for drugs targeting G-proteins (release)
• “Specialty biotech” PanGenetics gets €23M for antibody drugs (release)
• Cancer-drug maker Unibioscreen pulls in €5M (release)
• Danish contract manufacturer CMC Biologics raises new funding (PDF release)
• Healthcare investor EDF Ventures postpones fourth fund (VentureWire)
• Global TB-drug alliance names former Sanofi-Aventis exec Jerome Premmeurer as CEO (release)
• Liquidia Tech names Neal Fowler as CEO (release)

(NOTE: Sorry for the minimal posting yesterday — I was at the Health 2.0 conference with extremely limited Internet connectivity. Normal posting resumes today.)

Precision Thera merger with “blank check” Oracle Healthcare collapses – This item is now a standalone post here.

Sleep Solutions takes in $21M for sleep-apnea diagnostics – Sleep Solutions, a Pasadena, Md., developer of diagnostic devices for sleep apnea, raised $20.5 million in a new funding round. Investors included TPG Biotechnology, MedVenture Associates, Emergent Ventures and Lava Ventures.

Sleep Solutions has developed a home-use diagnostic device for identifying sleep apnea, which are breathing difficulties during sleep. Diagnosing apnea has traditionally required patients to spend the night in a sleep laboratory. Left untreated, apnea can increase the risk of more serious problems, including stroke and heart attack.

Trevena takes in $24M for drugs targeting G-proteins – Trevena (no Web site), a Berwyn, Penn., biotech focused on a new area of drug discovery, raised $24 million in a first funding round. Investors included Alta Partners, Healthcare Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Polaris Venture Partners.

Like many biotechs, Trevena plans to develop drugs that attack a particular biological mechanism rather than any particular disease. In this case, the company is targeting a class of proteins known as G-protein coupled receptors, or GPCR, which according to the company are affected by close to 40 percent of all drugs on the market today. The company didn’t describe its plans in any detail.

EDF Ventures, an Ann Arbor, Mich., VC firm specializing in early-stage healthcare, has delayed a planned fourth fund, Healthcare investor EDF Ventures postpones fourth fund – VentureWire reports. The postponement is related to the departure last year of managing director Beau Lasky, who left for Steamboat Ventures.

The firm intends to begin talking to potential investors again in several months. EDF didn’t say how much it hopes to raise in the new fund; its third fund closed in 2005 with $55 million in commitments.

• InfraReDx takes $17M for arterial-plaque detection (VentureWire)
• Cancer-drug developer Serenex sells out to Pfizer for undisclosed sum (release)
• Life-sciences fund Longitude Capital raises $95M (VentureWire)
• Hospital consultant Intercede Health names Gray Miller as CEO (release)

InfraReDx takes $17M for arterial-plaque detection – InfraReDx, a Burlington, Mass., developer of diagnostic systems that detect arterial plaque, raised $17 million in a third funding round, VentureWire reports. Sanderling Ventures led the round, joined by new and previous individual investors.

InfraReDx previously planned to raise up to $40 million in order to support expected commercialization of its near-infrared device, which can identify buildups of arterial plaque that can rupture and lead to heart attacks (see our coverage). The test, however, requires a minimally invasive procedure in which the device is threaded into a patient’s circulatory system, making the InfraReDx device primarily useful for preventing second heart attacks in patients who are being treated for their first.

The company submitted its device for FDA approval in October, and is planning on a limited rollout if the device is cleared this quarter, as InfraReDx expects.

Cancer-drug developer Serenex sells out to Pfizer for undisclosed sum – Durham, N.C.-based Serenex, a biotech working on drugs that could be useful in cancer and other conditions, agreed to be acquired by Pfizer. The release is here. The companies didn’t disclose terms of the deal.

Serenex claimed to have a technology for developing drugs against a wide variety of cellular proteins, but in practice Pfizer appears to have been most interested in drugs that inhibit heat-shock protein 90, or Hsp90, a molecule that regulates other proteins crucial to cellular growth and survival. The startup’s lead compound, SNX-5422, is in early-stage, phase I testing against a variety of tumors.

Pfizer, of course, will also walk away with Serenex’s drug-discovery technology and a library of other drug candidates. Notably, however, Pfizer did not buy the startup’s leading experimental drug, SNX-1012, which is being tested against oral mucositis, a common side effect of chemotherapy. That, of course, leaves open the possibility that Serenex management — or someone else — will try to form a new company around that drug. This sort of strategy is increasingly popular; for my take on it, see here.

Life-sciences fund Longitude Capital raises $95M – Menlo Park, Calif.-based Longitude Partners, a spinout of Pequot Ventures, raised $95 million of an anticipated $325 million first fund, VentureWire reports. The fund will invest in biotech, medical-device and drug-development startups.

DNA-based diagnostics face a fundamental, though hardly insuperable, obstacle: When you’re looking for a rare mutation or other identifying sequence of DNA “letters” (technically known as bases or nucleotides), there are rarely enough matching DNA molecules in your average blood or tissue sample for today’s technology to detect. So many such tests first require technicians to “amplify” DNA in the sample, usually by a process called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, which essentially “clones” DNA molecules by the millions — an extremely useful process that is nevertheless time-consuming and which requires expensive, specialized equipment.

One company claiming to have built a better DNA mousetrap is Adnavance Technologies, a Vancouver, Canada, startup with an intriguing nanotech method for detecting small quantities of DNA. Adnavance just raised C$3.7 million ($3.7 million) in a second round of funding, with investors including the Working Opportunity Fund, JovInvestment Management and the Business Development Bank of Canada.

As you can tell from its older logo, reproduced to the left, Adnavance chose its name in part to emphasize its focus on DNA. The company, founded in 2002, is developing tests based on a molecular trick that makes selected strands of DNA conduct electricity, making it possible to detect their presence using a microarray of tiny electrodes.

The basic idea is this: Using specific chemical conditions, Adnavance says it’s possible to force metallic ions between the double strands of DNA, where they displace the protons that usually help hold the helical molecules together. The metallic ions then serve much the same purpose as the central wire in a coaxial cable by freely conducting electricity, giving the DNA molecule as a whole an electrical property that can be measured directly.

Adnavance’s method starts by binding “capture” strands of DNA — that is, stretches that will bind to whatever mutated gene or viral sequence someone is looking for — to a gold electrode and “dehybridizing” them into their single-stranded forms. Once introduced to serum from a blood sample, say, those capture strands stick to matching DNA from the sample and resume their double-stranded shape. The system measures the conductivity of the bound DNA molecules, then introduces the metal ions to the solution, which in theory only integrate into capture probes that have bound perfectly to their targets — thus presumably eliminating mismatches. Measuring the difference in conductivity of the metallized strands compared to their predecessors yields a signal that the company says can detect as few as 500 matching DNA molecules. (By contrast, similar existing tests may require anywhere from 5,000 to 1 million target sequences to yield a detectable signal.)

The company’s first product candidate is a test for antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus, which it believes it can get onto the market by 2010. Adnavance believes its test will be simple enough for use in as many as 30,000 clinical laboratories that aren’t currently licensed to carry out existing DNA-based tests.

Oddly enough, Adnavance’s latest funding round is smaller than its first $3.9 million funding in 2005. That’s a little unusual for a company at this stage, and raises the natural question of whether it’s been forced to take a “down round” with a lower valuation than it previously held. An Adnavance representative, however, says that in 2005, the company actually included two other lines of business — focused on hydrogen fuel cells and DNA vaccines — that were spun out prior to the current funding round. So by that logic, the share of funding devoted to the DNA-diagnostic work has presumably risen. I should note, though, that the company’s lengthy release at the time was mostly devoted to its diagnostic work, and mentions the fuel-cell research in just two sentences at the end (and the vaccine not at all).

Adnavance has also named a new CEO, V. Randy White, who previously served as chief executive at Nanogen and Xenomics.

• Adnavance pulls in C$3.7M for molecular diagnostics, names new CEO (release)
• “Personalized medicine” co. Proprius sells to Cypress Bio for up to $75M (release)
• Vaccinex raises $25M in wake of GSK deal for antibody drugs (VentureWire)
• Cianna Medical receives $9M for breast-cancer radiation treatment (release)
• Electron-microscope image provider NanoImaging takes in $1.5M (release)
• CrystalGenomics, ProQuest Investments create JV co. Palkion (release)
• Portico Systems, software maker for insurance plans, raises $7.7M (release)
• Stealthy biotech Affomic takes in $7M (peHUB)

Adnavance pulls in C$3.7M for molecular diagnostics, names new CEO – This item is now a standalone post here.

“Personalized medicine” co. Proprius sells to Cypress Bio for up to $75M – Proprius Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego diagnostics maker, sold itself to publicly traded Cypress Bioscience for up to $75 million in cash. The company’s release is here.

Cypress will pay $37.5 million up front, and another $37.5 million to Proprius shareholders as milestone payments. Proprius licenses and develops drugs and diagnostics for various forms or arthritis. Its most immediate product candidates include tests that aim to predict whether certain individuals will develop rheumatoid arthritis and that monitor patients’ response to methotrexate, a common treatment for RA.

Vaccinex raises $25M in wake of GSK deal for antibody drugs – Rochester, N.Y.-based Vaccinex, a developer of antibody drugs, raised $25 million in an add-on to its second funding round, VentureWire reports. Investors included Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Pan Atlantic Bank and Trust and individual investors.

Earlier this month, Vaccinex and its partner EUSA Pharma licensed a Vaccinex antibody to GlaxoSmithKline for up to $44 million plus royalties. Vaccinex and EUSA will split any profits from GSK’s potential sales of the drug.

Cianna Medical receives $9M for breast-cancer radiation treatment – Cianna Medical, an Alisa Viejo, Calif., developer of devices for delivering local radiation in breast cancer, raised $9 million in a first funding round. Fog City Fund, Windamere Venture Partners and several private individuals provided the cash.

Cianna, which was spun out of BioLucent when it was acquired by Hologic last year, is working on new devices for brachytherapy, the general term for temporarily implanting radioactive material at the site of a tumor in order to provide localized radiation treatment. The Cianna device is designed to improve upon existing brachytherapy techniques in breast cancer.

Electron-microscope image provider NanoImaging takes in $1.5M – San Diego’s NanoImaging Services, a provider of imaging services involving transmission electron microscopy, raised $1.5 million in a funding round. Merck Capital Ventures led the round. The company specializes in the characterization of large biological molecules such as proteins, which are used in a variety of products such as vaccines and drugs.

CrystalGenomics, ProQuest Investments create new JV, Palkion – Today’s award for most baffling announcement comes courtesy of CrystalGenomics, an Emeryville, Calif.-based U.S. unit of the Korean drug-discovery company CG Pharmaceuticals, and ProQuest Investments, a New Jersey VC firm, who together have formed a joint venture they’re calling Palkion. Their release is here.

What is Palkion going to do? Beats me. Here’s what the release says:

Under this agreement, CrystalGenomics will receive up to $6 million in upfront and initial research funding from Palkion, in addition to development and sales milestone payments of potentially more than $200 million. CrystalGenomics will also initially own 50% of Palkion, Inc. ProQuest will capitalize Palkion with a Series A investment and also provide the management personnel for Palkion. CG will use its unique structure-based drug design capabilities to identify drug candidates while Palkion will oversee the clinical development of novel drug candidates.

So, let’s get this straight. CrystalGenomics and ProQuest form Palkion, in which they’ll hold equal stakes despite the fact that ProQuest seems to be putting all the capital and personnel into the venture. Palkion will then start handing the money to CrystalGenomics, which will continue trying to discover drugs while Palkion “oversees” the process of testing those drugs in people. All clear?

The best I can figure is that this is a roundabout way of putting a more “American” face on a basically Korean startup that — to judge from its Web site and, in fact, this press release — seems to have a certain amount of difficulty communicating clearly with a U.S. audience. That could certainly be a problem if its drugs make it into clinical trials, given how dialogue with the FDA becomes rather crucial at that stage. But that’s just my guess at this point.

Stealthy biotech Affomic takes in $7M – Affomic, a New Haven, Conn., biotech startup so stealthy that it can announce a funding without giving anyone a clue as to what it’s doing, raised $7 million in a first financing round, peHUB reports. Investors included Connecticut Innovations, Elm Street Ventures, and Four Seasons Ventures. It goes without saying that Affomic doesn’t have a Web site — in fact, the startup doesn’t even exist so far as Google is concerned.

• Microsoft launches $3M fund to support online health-improvement tools (release)
• Clarus Ventures raises $660M life-sciences fund (release)
• Iverson Genetics raises $1.1M for blood-clotting tests, seeks $9.3M more (VentureWire)
• Upstart Ventures aims for $30M fund to seed Utah life-science ventures (release)
• CalHealth takes in $750K for blood-pressure monitoring (VW)
• Regenerative medicine co. Organogenesis acquires NanoMatrix (release)
• Electronic health-record firm MediNotes acquires Bond Technologies (release)
• Eclipsys acquires Enterprise Performance for healthcare financial-management (release)
• Healthcare analytics firm Urix acquires Predicted Solutions (release)

Microsoft launches $3M fund to support online health-improvement tools – Software giant Microsoft, hoping to make a splash at the annual meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in Orlando — don’t laugh; HIMSS is apparently the largest healthcare IT meeting in the world — announced a new $3 million fund intended to stimulate the development of online tools that “improve health.” In typical Redmond fashion, the fund will be known as the “Microsoft HealthVault Be Well Fund,” which is the sort of name only a committee could love.

Microsoft is soliciting grant applications in six areas ranging from primary and “secondary” prevention (essentially, the monitoring of vital signs such as blood pressure for hypertension or blood sugar for diabetes) to women’s and community health. The fund will make grants of up to $500,000, with selections made by “healthcare industry leaders” — read, representatives of Microsoft partners — chosen by the Microsoft Health Solutions Group.

Of course, funded applications must make use of Microsoft’s HealthVault platform, which we’ve written about here and here as a decidedly mixed bag of technologies and Web applications. Three million bucks sounds like a pretty trivial amount to spend to in an attempt to jump-start HealthVault, but I guess Microsoft has to start somewhere.

Clarus Ventures raises $660M life-science fund – Clarus Ventures, a Cambridge, Mass., VC firm, closed a second life-science fund of $660 million. The fund will aim to make investments of $20 million to $60 million in biotechnology, medical devices and specialty pharmaceuticals.

Clarus raised its first $500 million fund in Dec. 2006. That fund has made significant investments in a variety of life-science companies including Globus Medical (our coverage), Pelikan Technologies (our coverage) and Taligen Therapeutics (our coverage).

Iverson Genetics raises $1.1M for blood-clotting tests, seeks $9.3M more – Iverson Genetic Diagnostics, a Seattle maker of molecular diagnostics, raised $1.1 million in a first funding round and hopes to close a $9.3 million second round within a few weeks, VentureWire reports. Individuals provided the first round of cash, and Iverson is courting a “strategic investor” — that is, a corporate or laboratory partner of some kind — for the second.

Iverson recently won FDA approval for a genetic test designed to predict patient response to warfarin, a commonly used generic blood thinner intended to prevent dangerous blood clots. Last August, the FDA required the drug’s manufacturers to note that certain genetic factors can help establish proper dosing of warfarin, which can cause internal bleeding at high doses. (See our coverage here.) Although two million people in the U.S. take warfarin every year, adoption of the genetic tests has been slow. Iverson is one of at least three companies now offering those tests, which Iverson plans to roll out first in the Seattle area.

• Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M (VentureWire)
• TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices (peHUB)
• Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M (release)
• Population Genetics takes in £3.8M for massively parallel genome studies (GenomeWeb)
• “Brain fitness” trainer Dakim raises $11M (release)
• BioIQ, home-diagnostics maker, takes in $2.5M (release)
• Hospital med-tracker Sabal Medical raises funds (release)
• Seattle’s PharmaIN gets $400K NIH grant for nanoparticle staph drug (PDF release)
• SensiGen, molecular-diagnostics developer, receives Michigan state loan (release)
• Arcus Ventures aims for $50M fund, targets cancer (VentureWire)

Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M – Zonare Medical Systems, a Mountain View, Calif., maker of ultrasound-imaging systems, raised $30 million in a recent seventh funding round, VentureWire reports. Existing investors provided the funding, a group that includes Frazier Healthcare Ventures, 3i Group, Mosaix Ventures, CB Health Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvestson, Ascension Health Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Earlybird, Saints Capital, Merrill Lynch Venture Capital and Texas Instruments.

The company said the funding should set it on the road to profitability and eventually to a hope-for IPO. Zonare makes compact ultrasound systems that can be used in sonography and for a variety of other medical diagnostic purposes.

TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices – TherOx, an Irvine, Calif., maker of oxygenation devices for treating heart attacks, raised $30 million in a tenth funding round, peHUB reports. Investors included Kleiner Perkins, Integral Capital Partners and New Science Ventures.

The startup makes devices that supersaturate blood with oxygen, then infuse that blood into areas of the heart at risk of damage from oxygen starvation due to a heart attack. TherOx has now raised over $120 million in venture funding.

Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M – San Diego’s Accumetrics, a maker of diagnostics that measure patient response to anti-platelet drugs, raised $28.8 million in a fourth round of funding. Investors included Arnerich Massena & Associates, BBT Fund, Essex Woodland Health Ventures, RiverVest, PTV Sciences, KB Partners and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.

The startup makes a system that measures how well individuals are reacting to treatment with anti-platelet drugs, which are used to prevent or help dislodge major blood clots. Since patient response can vary widely, often as a result of genetic factors (see our coverage of this sort of “personalized medicine” here), such monitoring can help doctors avoid dangerous overdoses or to switch unresponsive patients to higher doses or different drugs as necessary.

Population Genetics Technologies takes in £3.8M for massively parallel genome studies – Population Genetics Technologies, a U.K. startup devoted to technologies for studying thousands of genomes at once, raised £3.8 million ($5.9 million) in a first funding round, GenomeWeb reported. Investors included Auriga Partners, Noble Fund Managers, and Compass Genetics Investors.

The company raised £1.1 million in seed funding from the Wellcome Trust back in 2005 to aid in the development of the technology. PGT is working on a technique devised by Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner that purports to analyze genetic variation in DNA samples from thousands of individuals at once.

In this 2005 release, PGT co-founder Sam Eletr described the method as “will allow the mixing of thousands of samples in one test tube and the simultaneous interrogation [analysis] of all of them in one experiment, instead of in as many experiments as there are genomes in a population…. We expect our technology to allow handling much larger numbers of genomes than pooling does and to have the further advantage of protecting the identities of individuals involved in any population study by allocating them a code that may be kept confidential. We expect it also be applicable to any collection of DNA molecules and genomes, whether from plants, animals, micro-organisms or humans.”

PGT also named Mel Kronick, a former R&D manager at both Agilent Technologies and Applied Biosystems, as CEO.

• Molecular-diagnostics maker Atlas Genetics gets £2.1M (MS Word release)
• One-man shop Paloma Pharma takes in $5M for eye, cancer drugs (VentureWire)
• Israel’s Optimata receives $1.5M for simulations to rescue failed drugs (release)
• Centrose raises $1.3M for sugar-modified drugs (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
• Halyard buys healthcare-compliance adviser HCPro from Riverside (release)
• RiverRock Holdings acquires medical-billing software maker Dynamic Energy (release)
• Maryland’s Sirnaomics gets $50K for RNAi (TechJournal South)

Molecular-diagnostics maker Atlas Genetics gets £2.1M – Atlas Genetics, a Bath, U.K., developer of molecular diagnostics, raised £2.1 million ($4.1 million) in a funding round. The release is here (MS Word file). Investors included South West Ventures Fund, Finance South West Growth Fund, Braveheart Ventures, GEIF and private investors through the SWAIN business angel network.

Atlas is working on portable, rapid diagnostic systems that detect specific molecules of DNA and RNA from blood or urine in order to identify a variety of infectious pathogens. The company is currently exploring tests for chlamydia and gonorrhea, drug-resistant staphylococcus, group B streptococcus, meningitis and Norwalk virus, as well as an equine test for respiratory infections.

One-man shop Paloma Pharma takes in $5M for eye, cancer drugs – Paloma Pharmaceuticals, a Jamaica Plain, Mass., biotech focused on treating vascular disease, raised $5 million in a second funding round, VentureWire reports. Angel investors provided the funding.

Paloma is developing a class of “improved” anti-angiogenic drugs that interfere with blood-vessel growth. Such drugs could potentially treat a range of diseases, including cancer, ocular disease such as macular degeneration, arthritis, fibrotic disease and others. The company expects to begin clinical trials in cancer and eye disease later this year.

The startup has never taken venture capital and has only one employee, CEO David Sherris. Paloma contracts out almost all of its functions, and Sherris retains a majority stake in his company, which he hopes to sell or take public by the end of this year.

Israel’s Optimata receives $1.5M for simulations to rescue failed drugs – Optimata, an Israeli biotech that hopes to use computer simulations to “rescue” failed experimental drugs, raised $1.5 million in a funding round. Private investors from Europe provided the funding.

Optimata has developed a simulator it calls a “virtual patient” that can theoretically be used to model the way the human body responds to disease and drug treatments. The company’s intention is to use its model to revive drugs that failed in clinical trials by determining why things went wrong and ways to avoid prior pitfalls. Optimata says it is in the final stages of identifying discontinued cancer treatments that it wants to license and “repurpose.”

The startup, which just spun out of Avago Technologies — itself a twice-removed spinout of Hewlett-Packard‘s component division by way of Agilent Technologies — has spent 30 years producing optoelectronic products of one sort or another. Its current focus lies in developing portable devices that analyze laboratory diagnostic tests, particularly for tasks that previously required expensive bench-top laboratory equipment.

Alverix says its devices are not only cheaper, but also more accurate and far quicker than traditional methods for reading results from various blood and urine tests. For instance, the company says its technology can handle analysis of widely used antibody-based tests for illegal drugs, cancer, infectious disease, heart trouble and drug efficacy. Its products should make it possible to run these tests in doctors’ offices, at health clinics and even potentially at home, allowing patients to get their results far more quickly and potentially making immediate treatment possible if the results indicate a problem.

Founded just last year, Alverix aims to form partnerships with existing diagnostic companies that want to improve the accuracy and portability of their test analysis. The company doesn’t appear to have announced any such partnerships yet, although of course it might simply be keeping any such news under wraps.

• Amira Pharma strikes GSK partnership on lung, heart drugs worth up to $425M (release)
• Wolters Kluwer Health takes stake in Logical Images (release)
• Gentiva Health acquires Home Health Care Affiliates for $55M (release)
• Compuware buys Hilgraeve to upgrade healthcare IT (release)
• Touchstone Health appoints Michael Muchnicki CEO (release)
• Australia’s Xenome names Ian Nesbit as CEO (release)

Amira Pharma strikes GSK partnership on lung, heart drugs worth up to $425M – Amira Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego biotech focused on drugs for lung and heart problems, struck a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline potentially worth $425 million in upfront and milestone payments.

Amira is developing anti-inflammatory drugs based on its understanding of immune-system elements called eicosanoids. These fatty molecules are produced by white blood cells when foreign threats are perceived, triggering several different types of inflammation, which can damage healthy tissue when it’s prolonged by allergies or autoimmune disease.

Diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, atherosclerosis, arthritis and psoriasis are often the result. Amira aims to defuse the underlying inflammation caused by eicosanoids by inhibiting “upstream” molecules that are necessary for their production.

The company’s two lead candidates have entered early stage, phase I human tests. One compound targets asthma; Amira hasn’t identified which diseases the second drug is being tested in.

Under the partnership, GSK will have rights to develop and commercialize all of Amira’s compounds in its current development program, which are technically known as FLAP inhibitors (FLAP standing for 5-lipoxygenase-activating protein). In return, Amira will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, milestones related to development and potential tiered royalty payments.

Wolters Kluwer Health takes stake in Logical Images – Logical Images, a Rochester, N.Y., developer of medical image-analysis tools, sold a minority equity stake to Wolters Kluwer Health, a healthcare-information company in Conshohocken, Pa. The companies didn’t announce terms of the deal.

Logical Images makes visual healthcare tools for physicians and patients. Its products include VisualDx, a diagnostic tool designed to help physicians identify some 900 visually identifiable diseases, and VisualDxHealth, which does roughly the same thing for interested consumers. The companies said they intend to integrate VisualDx with Wolters’ product Clin-eguide, a “decision support” tool for physicians.

• Health-info site HealthCentral Network pulls in $50M (paidContent)
• BrightHeart Vet corrals $29M to acquire animal hospitals (release)
• AviaraDx raises $8M for cancer diagnostics (peHUB)
• Valor Medical aims for $15M for brain-aneurysm treatment (VentureWire)
• IPC, inpatient-care provider, raises as much as $56M in IPO (IPO Home)
• Phenomix, diabetes and hepatitis drug maker, files for $86M IPO (Edgar)
• TVM Capital promotes Keiarasch “Kia” Parssanedjad to principal in life sciences (release)

BrightHeart Vet corrals $29M to acquire animal hospitals — BrightHeart Veterinary Centers, an Armonk, N.Y., operator of veterinary hospitals, raised $28.5 million in a funding round intended to further the chain’s expansion. Investors included LLR Partners and Caltius Mezzanine.

BrightHeart currently runs facilities in New York, Connecticut, Illinois and Alberta, Canada, two of which it acquired just last week. The company intends to continue growing via acquisition.

AviaraDx raises $8M for cancer diagnostics — AviaraDx, a Carlsbad, Calif., developer of molecular cancer diagnostics, raised $8 million in a first funding round, peHUB reports, citing a regulatory filing. AviaraDx was spun out of the former Arcturus Bioscience, whose other assets were mostly acquired by Molecular Devices in 2006.

AviaraDx sells tests that identify tumors by their molecular “fingerprints” and predice which breast-cancer tumors are most likely to recur following surgery. The company isn’t providing much detail on its future development plans.

Valor Medical aims for $15M for brain-aneurysm treatment — Valor Medical, a San Diego device maker developing a new polymer-based treatment for brain aneurysms, is seeking $15 million in a second funding round, VentureWire reports. The company’s Neucrylate is a substance designed for use as a “filler” in aneurysms, which are dangerous arterial swellings that can rupture unexpectedly. Valor intends to begin clinical testing this year.

Phenomix, diabetes and hepatitis drug maker, files for $86M IPO — San Diego-based Phenomix, a biotech developing new drugs for diabetes and hepatitis, filed to raise $86.3 million in an initial offering. The company aims to be a “fast follower” that develops new drugs that address biological mechanisms that have been “validated” by successful drugs elsewhere.

Satoris plans to use the funding to begin commercialization of its protein-based blood test for Alzheimer’s disease, which the company expects to make available in the first half of this year. It looks like Satoris initially plans to market the test as a tool for clinical research, not as a general-purpose diagnostic, as the VentureWire story says the company plans to target pharma/biotech companies and Alzheimer’s research groups.

That’s definitely a good idea. The test itself certainly has the potential to break some important ground — Alzheimer’s can’t currently be diagnosed except by neurobehavioral testing of already-sick patients or via a post-mortem autopsy, whereas the Satoris test appears to detect the disease at a much earlier stage. But its error rates remain quite high, despite what the company touts as a 90 percent accuracy rate. I explained why in this post, which unpacked the numbers and showed why even that level of accuracy would produce a tremendous amount of life-altering misinformation if used to screen the general public.

The VentureWire story doesn’t say so, but to make the test commercially available that quickly almost certainly means Satoris will offer it as a “home brew” diagnostic, which allows it to sidestep the FDA approval process. Home-brew tests are performed by companies themselves in state-regulated laboratories — doctors or hospitals send patient samples into the lab, which then sends back the results. These sorts of diagnostics are permitted under a federal law known as the Clinical Laboatory Improvement Amendments, or CLIA. Traditional diagnostics, which usually involve the marketing of test kits and associated equipment to reference laboratories, hospitals or individual physicians, require explicit FDA approval.

Satoris says the funds will allow it to devote additional resources to further development of the test, and expects its cash cushion to last “well into next year.” CEO Cris McReynolds told VentureWire that he expects to begin fundraising again at the end of the year. VentureWire didn’t name investors in the current round, but previously reported that they would include Life Science Angels and Brain Trust Accelerator Fund.

• Autonomic Technologies raises $3M for neurostimulators (PE Hub)
• Canopy Financial raises $15M for outsourced healthcare management (release)
• Cancer-drug developer AmpliMed draws $5M (PE Hub)
• Caprotec Bioanalytics receives €6M for protein-analysis tech (release)
• ProtAffin draws additional €1.4M for anti-inflammatory drugs (release)
• Toxicology-services firm Bridge Labs takes in $18M (release)
• Dental-compound maker NovaMin takes in $2.2M (TechJournal South)
• Aushon Bio takes in $4M for microarrays (PE Hub)
• Treatment Online receives $750K for Web behavioral healthcare (PDF release)
• IPO the Hospitalist aims to raise $60M with IPO for inpatient care (Edgar)
• Clinical diagnostics maker Laboratory Partners pulls in $16M (VentureWire, sub req’d)
• SynDevRx targets $11M for cancer drugs (VW)

Autonomic Technologies raises $3M for neurostimulators — Menlo Park, Calif.-based Autonomic Technologies (no Web site), a medical device company developing some sort of neurostimulator, has raised $3 million of an intended $5 million first round of funding, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers provided the cash, while the Cleveland Clinic is also listed as a shareholder.

The company appears to be pretty well stealthed, as so far I haven’t managed to turn up any telltale traces outside of this single report. Among other things, the Kleiner site, unsurprisingly, doesn’t even list Autonomic in its portfolio. One potential clue lies in the company’s name, as the phrase “autonomic technology” generally refers to software or a network that manages and corrects itself (IBM has been a big proponent of the idea, although it’s hard to tell from here if it’s classic IT hype or something real). So presumably the startup is pursuing neurostimulation that engages a “self-healing” response of some sort in the brain or central nervous system.

If anyone knows anything about what Autonomic is up to, feel free to give us a shout in comments or by email.

Cancer-drug developer AmpliMed draws $5M — Amplimed, a Tuscon, Ariz., biotech focused on cancer drugs, has raised $5 million of a planned $22 million third funding round, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Investors included BioMed Venture Partners, Biotech Insight Ventures, Solstice Capital and Valley Ventures.

AmpliMed is working on a new type of chemotherapy drug — technically, a cytotoxic chemotherapy that targets all rapidly dividing cells in the body — that it claims may be substantially less toxic that most such drugs. The company’s lead candidate, which it calls Amplimexon, inhibits a compound called glutathione that appears to protect cancer cells from damage by “free oxygen” radicals, or single-atom oxygen ions that typically wreak havoc within cells. AmpliMed suggests that non-cancerous cells that also divide rapidly, such as those lining the gut, appear to weather the suppression of glutathione more hardily than tumor cells, which theoretically should accumulate loads of oxygen radicals and then self-destruct.

Amplimexon is currently in mid-stage human tests against pancreatic and skin cancer. The company also has two other cancer compounds in earlier stages of development.

Canopy Financial raises $15M for outsourced healthcare management — Canopy Financial, a San Francisco developer of healthcare information systems, raised $15 million in a first funding round. Granite Global Ventures provided the funding.

Canopy sells systems for managing “consumer-oriented” health plans such as health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts. These are plans that purport to reduce healthcare costs by making individuals “responsible” for their medical spending, in effect by requiring them to pay for doctor and hospital visits out of a pre-established and often tax-exempt account to which employers may or may not contribute.

Clinical diagnostics maker Laboratory Partners pulls in $16M — Palo Alto, Calif.-based Laboratory Partners (no Web site), a provider of diagnostic tests to hospitals and other healthcare providers, raised $16 million in a fourth funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The company said the funding will allow it to pursue acquisitions in the field.

Investors in the round included Primus Capital Funds (which put up $10 million), Oxford Bioscience Partners, Chrysalis Ventures and Fort Washington Capital Partners Group. Lab Partners has previously raised $26 million in venture funding, VentureWire reports.

SynDevRx targets $11M for cancer drugs — SynDevRx, a Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech developing new cancer drugs, is looking to raise $11 million in a first funding round, VentureWire reports. The company is pursuing an anti-angiogenic compound — that is, a drug candidate intended to block the growth of new blood vessels in tumors — originally developed in the lab of Children’s Hospital researcher Judah Folkman.

SynDevRx, founded in 2007, says this family of compounds may also be useful in other disease, including age-related macular degeneration, endometriosis and fluid retention (edema). The funding will allow the company to move its lead candidate, Caplostatin, into clinical trials. The compound caused side effects in previous clinical trials, but has since been re-engineered in hopes of mitigating that toxicity.

• CyberHeart pumps in $9M for cardiac-arrhythmia treatment (release)
• Incubator ForSight launches third device company with $6M funding (release)
• Primera Biosystems raises $21M for molecular diagnostics (release)
• Biogen Idec, PDL BioPharma take stakes in Ophthotech (release)
• Technitrol acquires medical-device component maker Sonion for $385M (release)
• DLJ Merchant Banking takes control of dentristy-product maker Den-Mat (release)
• SV Life Sciences appoints Hamish Cameron as venture partner (release)

CyberHeart pumps in $9M for cardiac-arrhythmia treatment – CyberHeart, a Menlo Park, Calif., startup developing a non-invasive treatment for heart arrhythmias, raised $9 million in a first funding round. Investors included Emergent Medical Ventures, United Investments, Venture Select and Mitsubishi.

Arrythmias, which are irregular heartbeats often caused by a malfunction in the heart’s electrical-signaling system, are often treated via a catheter-based procedure that burns away tissue where the unusual rhythms originate. CyberHeart is working on hardware and software modifications for the CyberKnife system, a robotic radiosurgery device produced by Accuray, in order to extend its use in heart applications. In other words, CyberHeart’s adaptations will, if all goes well, allow doctors to perform the same sort of procedure non-invasively with the CyberKnife, an external radiation device that is supposed to deliver high-energy beams with submillimeter accuracy.

Incubator ForSight launches third device company with $6M funding – ForSight Labs, a medical-device incubator in Menlo Park, Calif., founded its third company, ForSight VISION3 and announced that it had raised $6 million in a first funding round. Investors included Morgenthaler Ventures, Split Rock Partners and Versant Ventures — all of whom, coincidentally, back ForSight as well.

ForSight hasn’t disclosed anything about the technology or approach that the new company will take, and in fact often remains secretive about its incubated companies for quite some time. In fact, the incubator sold its second company to QLT for $42 million plus milestone payments last October — a time the startup was known only as ForSight NewCo II.

Primera Biosystems raises $21M for molecular diagnostics – Mansfield, Mass.-based Primera Biosystems, a biotech developing molecular diagnostics, raised $21 million in a second funding round. Investors included Abingworth, Interwest Partners, Malaysian Technology Development Corporation, MPM Capital, Burrill & Co. and the Invus Group.

Primera’s gene-analysis system, which it calls STAR (short for “scalable transcription analysis routine”), is designed to read the activity of up to 100 genes at once with much greater sensitivity and precision than existing microarray technologies permit. The company plans to use the funding to complete development of its system, design future diagnostic tests in cancer and infectious disease, and produce test kits for clinical research.

• India’s Perfint, medical-device co., raises $3.5M (release)
• Source MDx strikes Pfizer partnership to ID cancer, inflammation “fingerprints” (release)
• Columbia River Resources acquires pharma RFID maker Traxxec (release)

India’s Perfint, medical-device co., raises $3.5M – Perfint, a Chennai, India-based producer of medical equipment, raised $3.5 million in a new funding round.

IDG Ventures India and Erasmus Venture Fund provided the cash. IDG supplied the bulk of the investment — $3 million — with Erasmus providing the rest.

Perfint’s first product, the PIGA-CT, is a tool positioner for minimally invasive procedures. The PIGA-CT is designed to work with a variety of compact CT scanners for image-guided positioning.

Source MDx strikes Pfizer partnership to ID cancer, inflammation “fingerprints” – Source MDx, a Boulder, Colo., developer of molecular diagnostics, struck a multi-year partnership with Pfizer. The two companies will identify and validate “biomarkers” — essentially, any sort of biochemical signal, such as levels of a particular protein or RNA snippet — that can be used to track the effect of a drug or predict the course of disease.

The collaboration will focus on Pfizer’s cancer and inflammation drug-development programs. Financial details weren’t disclosed, although Pfizer will make an equity investment in Source MDx and pay both a technology licensing fee and R&D costs. Source MDx will retain commercial rights to diagnostic biomarkers discovered and validated by the partnership.

Cantimer’s Web site is still a stub, although it describes the company as “focusing on assessment of human hydration using effective and innovative sensor technology.” Cantimer’s founder and now former CEO, Ray Stewart, is a serial entrepreneur who previously worked as a principle at BayMaterials, a high-tech materials consulting firm. Prior to that, Stewart founded Landec, a developer of “intelligent” polymers that react in specific ways to temperature changes, and prior to that was a scientist at Raychem.

Stewart has also filed a patent application for a “phase change sensor.” Broadly speaking, this is a sort of nanodevice involving an antibody-coated, polymer-based sensor pad and a cantilever arm. Once the antibodies detect a molecule of interest, the polymer expands or contracts, moving the cantilever arm and generating a detectable electric current via a piezoelectric crystal that converts pressure into current. That sort of design would certainly explain Cantimer’s name, which sounds very much like a portmanteau of “cantilever” and “polymer.”

Such nanosensor designs are being studied all over the place — see, for example, our coverage of the U.K. medical-sensor company Vivacta here — so it’s not clear how different Cantimer’s technology might be at this point. Of course, this sort of sensor could have multiple applications just as Cantimer seems to suggest. However, it also appears that Stewart’s patent application may be meeting with resistance at the patent office — see, for instance, the Nov. 13, 2006 “non-final rejection” noted at the Patent and Trademark office site here — although of course it’s also impossible to know if this patent is even the main basis for Cantimer’s technology.

I’m not steeped enough in this field to hazard a guess as to what use this technology might be for “human hydration,” although if it works, there’s no reason it couldn’t be useful for quantifying the presence of water in human blood, tissue or other substances. Presumably the company has something bigger in mind than detecting whether someone is simply dehydrated, though.

Stracey, the new CEO, formerly headed up Applied Imaging, a medical-device company focused on early diagnosis of cancer and genetic disease. Stewart will remain as Cantimer’s chief technology officer.

• Fundamental Applied Biology pulls in $21M for proteins without cells (release)
• Diagnostics maker Asuragen receives $19M (release)
• Stroke-device maker Neurovasx raises $8.5M (release)
• Cancer-vaccine maker ImmunoVaccine Tech buys Immunotope, seeks $15M (release)
• Vascular imager CardioSpectra sells itself to Volcano for $25M (release)
• Spinal-implant maker Altiva sells to Exactech for $25M (release)
• U.S. Healthworks acquires Inland Industrial in occcupational-healthcare consolidation (release)
• Private-equity group acquires American Laser Centers (release)

Diagnostics maker Asuragen receives $19M — Asuragen, an Austin, Tex., developer of molecular diagnostics for cancer, raised $18.5 million in a second funding round. Investors included PTV Sciences, Telegraph Hill Partners and Growth Capital Partners.

Asuragen is developing diagnostic tests for the early detection and monitoring of cancer, with a focus on using “micro-RNA” molecules in blood as “markers” for the presence and growth of tumors. The company is also working on cancer therapies based on microRNAs, or miRNAs, although none of them appear to be close to testing in people. Asuragen, however, did recently strike a cancer-diagnostic partnership with Merck, although the companies didn’t disclose the financial terms.

Stroke-device maker Neurovasx raises $8.5M — Neurovasx, a Maple Grove, Minn., maker of devices for stroke and aneurysm treatment, raised $8.5 million in a new financing round. MSK and the Stephens Group provided the cash.

Neurovasx’s lead product is cPAX, a potential treatment for cerebral aneurysms, which are dangerous bulges in brain arteries that can burst without warning. cPAX is a polymer strand delivered through the blood vessel, which is coiled and “packed” inside the bulge so as to reduce the pressure on the arterial wall.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Pelikan Tech raises $69M for diabetes glucose tests (release)
• Utah’s LineaGen draws $6M for genetic diagnostics (VentureWire, sub req’d)
• Beijing’s IKang Healthcare gets $25M for medical-service centers (VW)
• BG Medicine drops IPO price range, seeks up to $52M (Edgar)
• Sepragen completes acquisition of Cyto Biologic Tech (release)

Utah’s LineaGen draws $6M for genetic diagnostics — LineaGen (no Web site), a Salt Lake City biotech focused on genetic diagnostics, raised $6 million in a first round of funding, VentureWire reports. Investors included
Sanderling Ventures, vSpring Capital and Mesa Verde Partners.

The company aims to identify genomic markers — presumably the single-letter DNA variations known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms — for a variety of diseases, including autism, multiple sclerosis, cancer and lung disease. LineaGen is using detailed databases on Utah’s predominately Mormon population, which keeps careful genealogical records, to identify markers that it can then turn into diagnostic tests for those conditions.

A variety of other companies have been embarked on similar projects, most notably DeCode Genetics, which has been conducting genetic analyses on the Icelandic population for years. VentureWire notes that Genzion Biosciences has been doing the same for French Canadians.

BG Medicine drops IPO price range, seeks up to $52M — Waltham, Mass.-based BG Medicine, a developer of molecular diagnostics, dropped its IPO price range and now plans to raise no more than $52 million. The company, which had previously sought to offer up to 5.2 million shares at a price between $14 and $16, now aims for a price between $8 and $10. Its latest SEC filing is here.

The company’s setback is but the latest in its unusual IPO history. It first reported plans to go public on Amsterdam’s EuroNext exchange, then apparently scrapped that idea and filed to list on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. At its previously price range, BG Medicine stood to raise as much as $83 million, so its latest decision represents a fairly significant haircut to its earlier hopes.