Life-science briefing: Wednesday, March 26, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
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… Continue Reading
Defibrillator maker Cameron Health takes in $14M
Cameron Health, a San Clemente, Calif., medical-device maker, has raised $14.1 million of a planned $50 million fifth funding round, I’ve learned. The company is working on a new type of implantable defibrillator that’s designed to be easier to implant and program than existing models.
Implantable defibrillators administer shocks to the hearts of people who are at risk of cardiac arrest — a critical condition in which the heart simply stops beating. When the device senses… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
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… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007
Featured companies: Cerus, LabNow, Reliant Pharmaceuticals
UPDATED: Expanded items on Reliant Pharmaceuticals and Cerus.
GSK acquires Reliant Pharma for $1.65 billion — And then there were none. Reliant Pharmaceuticals, a Liberty Corner, N.J., specialty pharma that filed for an initial offering back in August, has instead decided to sell itself to GlaxoSmithKline for the eye-popping sum of $1.65 billion. The release is here. The acquisition news comes just days after doppelganger Reliant Technologies abandoned its own IPO bid (see… Continue Reading
Amgen, Relypsa and the art of the biotech-spinout-startup-restart
(UPDATED: See below.)
A common dilemma in biotech acquisitions is how to keep a startup’s entrepreneurial management happy and productive when they’ve just been assimilated by the Borg. The answer, often enough, is not to bother, and to let them spin out a new company with scientific “leftovers” that weren’t the point of the acquisition in the first place.
That’s more or less what Amgen has just done in launching Relypsa, a new Santa Clara, Calif., biotech just… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Friday, Oct. 19, 2007
Featured companies: DirectFlow, Direvo, Indigo Biosystems, MacroGenics
Direct Flow raises $27M for heart-valve implants — Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Direct Flow Medical, a startup developing heart implants, raised $27 million in a second funding round. Investors included Johnson & Johnson Development, Foundation Medical Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, ePlanet, EDF Ventures, New Leaf Venture Partners and Spray Venture Partners.
Direct Flow makes minimally invasive aortic-valve replacements for the heart. This particular field happens to be booming — we’ve previously covered… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007
Featured companies: Aveo Pharmaceuticals, Aviir, deltaDot, Origen Therapeutics
Heart-diagnostic maker Aviir raises $11.3M — Palo Alto, Calif.-based Aviir, a biotech developing cardiovascular diagnostics based on Stanford research, raised $11.3 million of an expected $25 million second funding round, PE Hub reports. The news is presumably from one of those paper-based SEC filings that are supposed to be digitized before long.
Investors include Bay City Capital, Aberdare Ventures and New Leaf Ventures. Aviir hasn’t said much about its technology… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Monday, Sept. 10, 2007
Featured companies: BioVascular, Carefx, ClinResearch, Healthcare Management Directions, NanoCor, OxyPlus, Revitus, Spotlight Surgical, United BioSource
UPDATED: See below.
Healthcare IT provider Carefx pulls in $17.9M — Carefx, a Scottsdale, Ariz., provider of hardware and software that “aggregates” patient records, has raised $17.85 million in a third funding round, Private Equity Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Investors included Carlyle Venture Partners and UV Partners.
Carefx’s pitch is basically the same as that from any system integrator — a term guaranteed… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007
(UPDATED at 12:30pm PT — see below.)
Featured companies: Capnia, AutekBio, Novacta Biosystems, XLHealth, Leprechaun, Agility Healthcare Solutions, AM Pharma, Milestone Pharmaceuticals, ChanTest
Capnia names former Alza head as CEO – The tiny Palo Alto, Calif., biotech Capnia hired Ernest Mario, a storied figure in the pharma/biotech world, as its CEO. Mario was most recently chairman — and previously CEO — of Reliant Pharmaceuticals, but he’s best known for running drug giant Glaxo (now GlaxoSmithKline) and, immediately thereafter, helming Alza… Continue Reading
Roundup: Thailand vs. Big Pharma, kids with heart disease, biomedical research funding, and more
Arm wrestling over drug patents – Three months ago, the military government running Thailand informed Abbott Laboratories that it intended to break the company’s patents on several expensive drugs, including the HIV protease inhibitor Kaletra, thus allowing the manufacture or import of cheaper knockoffs. Abbott responded by dropping its plans to bring newer drugs, including a heat-resistant version of Kaletra, to Thailand, and the pharma and the junta have been locked in a standoff ever since…. Continue Reading
Brazil’s great stem-cell experiment
[Editor's note: David Hamilton, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, has covered the biotech sector for years and we're delighted to have him as a contributor on news and trends in biotech, health and science (we've already run a few of his pieces). Biotech and health start-ups haven't been a VentureBeat focus, but they're important. We plan to create a separate forum for his work, and point to his more important stuff from VentureBeat.]
The… Continue Reading
Brazil’s great stem-cell experiment
(Note: This item has been copied over to the Life Sciences page from its original location on the VentureBeat main page. To view it in its original context, with comments, click here.)
[Editor’s note: David Hamilton, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, has covered the biotech sector for years and we’re delighted to have him as a contributor on news and trends in biotech, health and science (we’ve already run a few of his pieces). Biotech… Continue Reading