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	<title>VentureBeat &#187; gastrointestinal</title>
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		<title>Life sciences briefing: Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007</title>
		<link>http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/04/life-sciences-briefing-thursday-oct-4-2007/</link>
		<comments>http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/04/life-sciences-briefing-thursday-oct-4-2007/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:12:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>David P. Hamilton</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[electrophoresis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gastrointestinal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[liver disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[needleless drug delivery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NIST]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[organ transplant rejection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personal genomics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[protein chip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[specialty pharmaceuticals]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/04/life-sciences-briefing-thursday-oct-4-2007/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><em><strong>Featured companies:</strong> 23andMe, APT Pharmaceuticals, Hyperion Therapeutics, Isis Biopolymer, Virogenomics</em></p>
<p><em><strong>UPDATED</strong> at 10:30am PT.</em></p>
<p><strong>APT Pharma raises $22M for transplant and heart drugs &#8212; </strong>Burlingame, Calif.&#8217;s APT Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharma currently focused on a drug to fight organ-transplant rejection, &#8230;</p><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=venturebeat.com&amp;blog=342986&amp;post=41190&amp;subd=venturebeat&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><strong>Featured companies:</strong> 23andMe, APT Pharmaceuticals, Hyperion Therapeutics, Isis Biopolymer, Virogenomics</em></p>
<p><em><strong>UPDATED</strong> at 10:30am PT.</em></p>
<p><strong>APT Pharma raises $22M for transplant and heart drugs &#8212; </strong>Burlingame, Calif.&#8217;s <a href="http://www.aptbio.com" target="_blank">APT Pharmaceuticals</a>, a specialty pharma currently focused on a drug to fight organ-transplant rejection, <a href="http://www.aptbio.com/n_100407.html" target="_blank">raised $22 million</a> in an extension of its first funding round. Investors included Versant Ventures, Great Point Partners, Vivo Ventures and Charter Life Sciences.</p>
<p>APT, which acquires its drug candidates instead of developing them itself, has raised a total of $30 million to date. Its lead candidate is an inhalable form of the immunosuppressive drug <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclosporine" target="_blank">cyclosporine</a>, called Pulmoniq, which is intended to prevent rejection and improve survival in lung-transplant patients.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/?p=1545"href='http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/23andme-logo.jpg' title='23andme-logo.jpg'><img src='http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/23andme-logo.jpg' alt='23andme-logo.jpg' /></a><strong>23andMe reveals size of first funding round &#8212; </strong><a  target="_blank">PE Hub reports</a> that Google-backed <a href="http://www.23andme.com" target="_blank">23andMe</a> has raised $8.9 million, citing a regulatory filing. Apparently, however, this isn&#8217;t new funding. When the personal-genomics startup (see our coverage <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/22/google-genentech-fund-personal-genetics-startup-23andme/">here</a> and <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/13/the-decoding-of-23andme-proceeds-apace/">here</a>) announced its funding back in May, all we knew was that Google had invested $3.9 million, with unspecified participation by Mohr-Davidow Ventures and New Enterprise Associates bringing the round to somewhere around $10 million. I&#8217;m now told that the $8.9 million figure is just the total of that first round, which also included participation of some angel investors.</p>
<p><a href="http://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/latest.jsp?resourceid=3571920&amp;access=EH"href='http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/hyperion-therapeutics-logo.jpg' title='hyperion-therapeutics-logo.JPG'><img src='http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/hyperion-therapeutics-logo.jpg' alt='hyperion-therapeutics-logo.JPG' /></a><strong>Hyperion Therapeutics drums up $15M in debt &#8212; </strong>The South San Francisco specialty pharma <a  target="_blank">pulled in $15 million in debt financing</a> from Comerica Bank and Life Sciences Capital. <a href="http://www.hyperiontx.com/" target="_blank">Hyperion</a>, which raised $40 million in equity just a month ago (see our coverage in the first item <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/05/life-sciences-briefing-wednesday-sept-5-2007/">here</a>), in-licenses drug candidates from other companies and runs them through clinical trials.</p>
<p>The company also announced a slate of senior executives, many of them from Ucyclyd, a <a href="http://www.medicis.com/" target="_blank">Medicis Pharmaceutical</a> unit with which Hyperion recently concluded a licensing deal. Hyperion&#8217;s lead drug candidates address a gastrointestinal disorder and liver disease.</p>
<p><strong>Drug-delivery company Isis Biopolymer draws $1.5M &#8212; </strong><a href="http://www.isisbiopolymer.com/" target="_blank">Isis Biopolymer</a>, a Warwick, R.I., device maker focused on a new drug-delivery technology, raised $1.5 million in seed funding, <a href="http://professional.venturewire.com/story.asp?sid=LNJQHQQKJQI" target="_blank">VentureWire reports</a> (subscription required). GP Bullhound of London provided the funding.</p>
<p>Isis is exploring ways of using electrophoresis, a low-level electric current that can theoretically drag large, charged drug molecules across barriers like skin, as a new way of delivering drugs without needles via a patch-type device &#8212; one the company tells VentureWire is &#8220;more of a Band-Aid than an iPod.&#8221; The company has launched a $5 million first round of fundraising, and expects to begin human trials of its patch early next year.</p>
<p><strong>Virogenomics gets $2M grant for bio-sensor work &#8212; </strong><a href="http://www.nist.gov" target="_blank">NIST</a> awarded Tigard, Ore.-based <a href="http://www.virogenomics.com/" target="_blank">Virogenomics</a> a $2 million grant to develop a system that tests for a variety of biological molecules at once, <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&amp;STORY=/www/story/10-03-2007/0004675661&amp;EDATE=" target="_blank">the company said</a>. A closer read of the company&#8217;s press release suggests that it is developing a kind of protein chip &#8212; essentially a way of scanning for the presence of particular proteins in a sample such as blood serum &#8212; that relies on some sort of microelectronic &#8220;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transducer" target="_blank">transducers</a>&#8221; to signal detection.</p>
<p>At least from this description, it&#8217;s not really clear why this sort of technology would warrant a NIST grant, as any number of companies are developing similar-sounding protein chips. Virogenomics is something between a biotechnology firm and an incubator; the company says it licenses promising technologies and develops them in-house until it can spin them off into new startup companies. (Virogenomics strikes me as a pretty odd name for this sort of tech-development outfit, unless it&#8217;s a failed biotech that later developed a new purpose, although that&#8217;s just a guess.)</p>
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