VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Sonoma Ortho names Glen Coleman as CEO, preps launch of bone implant (VentureWire)
• TechniScan draws $13M for ultrasound CT scanners (release)
• OrbiMed plans $150M Asian life-science fund (VentureWire)
• Accelerated Tech pulls in $47M, aims for $125M in second med-tech fund (VentureWire)
• Amedisys buys out TLC Health Care for $395M (release)
• Intertek acquires microbe measurer CML Biotech (release)
• Medical-device maker Cianna Medical names Jill Anderson as CEO (release)

Sonoma Ortho names Glen Coleman as CEO, preps launch of bone implant – Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Sonoma Orthopedic Products, until recently a stealthy developer of implants for treating bone fractures, named a new CEO as it prepares for the launch of its first product, VentureWire reports.

The company hired Glen Coleman, former U.S. head of sales and marketing for Wright Medical Technology, as CEO last October in preparation for the anticipated FDA approval of its first bone implant. That product, which Sonoma calls Ensplint, is a flexible implant intended for the hollow space of a broken bone, where it is supposed to speed the healing of fractures.

Ensplint is installed via a minimally invasive procedure, and is intended first for use in wrist fractures, an indication for which the company hopes to soon receive approval. Sonoma will request FDA clearance to use Ensplint in collarbone fractures later this year.

For more details, check out this May 2007 piece from the North Bay Business Journal, which makes clear — as VentureWire didn’t — that the market for bone-fracture treatment is primarily associated with osteoporosis. According to VentureWire, Sonoma has so far raised $13 million in two funding rounds.

TechniScan draws $13M for ultrasound CT scanners – Salt Lake City’s TechniScan Medical Systems, a developer of ultrasound breast-imaging systems for cancer detection in conjunction with mammography, raised $13 million in a fifth funding round. Investors included the Esaote Group and return backers from TechniScan’s board and angel investors.

OrbiMed plans $150M Asian life-science fund – OrbiMed Advisors aims to close a $150 million fund that will target Asian life sciences and healthcare services, VentureWire reports. The fund, Caduceus Asia Partners, will invest in 10 to 15 companies, primarily in China and India.

Accelerated Tech pulls in $47M, aims for $125M in second med-tech fund – Accelerated Technologies Partners, a VC firm and accelerator in Hackensack, N.J., raised $46.5 million toward an expected $125 million second medical-device fund, VentureWire reports. The firm has a primary focus on heart-related applications, and plays an active role in getting startups it funds off the ground.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• 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.

MPM Capital, a VC firm headquartered in Boston and South San Francisco, Calif., wants to put Indian life-science firms on notice that it’s comin’ a-huntin’. The VC firm told reporters for VentureWire, Reuters and others that it plans to actively pursue equity investments in privately held Indian healthcare firms over the next six months.

William Greene, a general partner at MPM, said he would like to see the firm make one or two Indian investments over the next six months, each “in the range” of $20 million. MPM would plan on taking stakes of 10 percent to 40 percent in the life-science companies it invests in, Greene said.

Areas of interest for MPM include drug discovery outsourcing, contract research and manufacturing services and medical devices. Greene said he’d also be interested in companies developing novel therapeutics. “India is a highly under-penetrated market for life sciences,” he told reporters.

MPM has already take steps to raise its profile in the subcontinent. In April, the firm announced a partnership with Mumbai-based Reliance Life Sciences (PDF link), in which Reliance invested in MPM’s BioVentures IV fund and will advise MPM as it identifies and invests in emerging Indian life-science companies. Among other things, MPM said it would explore the possibility of establishing a seed fund devoted to India.

Because Yahoo! News stories often succumb to linkrot, the text of the Reuters piece follows the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Featured companies: AxoGen, Cognition Therapeutics, Ester Neurosciences, Gene Security Network, HealthTalk, MPM Capital, Revolution Health, SparkPeople

UPDATING: Expanded items on AxoGen, Ester and Cognition. Posted full items on MPM (link) and Gene Security Network (link).

AxoGen raises $12M for nerve regeneration — AxoGen, an Alachua, Fla., biotech focused on developing grafts for damaged “peripheral” nerves, raised $12.1 million in a third funding round. Investors included Accuitive Medical Ventures, Cardinal Partners, De Novo Ventures and Springboard Capital II.

AxoGen develops tissue grafts designed to preserve or restore the function of damaged nerves in the body’s periphery — areas such as the limbs, face or genitals. The company’s technology aims to “cleanse” nerve-graft tissue of substances that might inhibit nerve growth and regeneration — particularly one known as chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan — while preserving other factors that promote regrowth and integration of the grafted nerve.

The company launched its first peripheral-nerve graft product in July. AxoGen says the new funding will allow it to promote the product more vigorously.

Ester Neurosciences acquired by Amarin for $15M — Israel’s Ester Neurosciences, a biotech developing treatments for neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, sold itself to Amarin of the U.K. for an upfront payment of $15 million plus up to $17 million in contingency payments. The release is here.

Ester’s lead program consists of a gene-silencing “antisense” drug for the neurodegenerative condition myasthenia gravis, which is now in a mid-stage test involving 18 patients. The company is also working with Pharmacopeia of the U.S. to develop small-molecule drugs that target variants of the AChE neurotransmitter that appear to be related to behavioral abnormalities or cognitive and motor degeneration.

HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• AxoGen raises $12M for nerve regeneration (release)
• Ester Neurosciences acquired by Amarin for $15M (release)
• Alzheimer’s drug developer Cognition Therapeutics raises $200K (release)
• RevolutionHealth acquires HealthTalk, invests in SparkPeople (release)
• MPM Capital looks for Indian life-science investments (VentureWire, sub req’d)
• Gene Security Network gets $4M for molecular diagnostics (release)

Here’s the latest action:

Digg, the news-ranking site, signs big advertising deal with Microsoft — It is similar to the one signed by Facebook with Microsoft, says co-founder Kevin Rose.

Divx to spin off its Stage6 video-sharing site: Stage6, a site featuring user-created videos that uses technology from its publicly traded parent company Divx, has been growing so fast that Divx has experienced a sharp up-tick in operating expenses, lowering its overall operating income. So San Diego’s DivX will spin out Stage6, which will now seek venture funding. Unique visitors to Stage6 numbered 10 million in June, up from four million in April. DivX, meanwhile, focus on its core business of licensing high-resolution video creation technology to device manufacturers — TV makers, mobile phone companies and others. The Divx “codec” or video compression-decompression software library, has been downloaded over 220 million times since the start of 2003, including 70 million times in the last 12 months, the company said in a statement.

Facebook lawsuit continues — Facebook, responding to a suit filed against Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg that alleges he stole code from an earlier company working on a similar idea, issued the following statement after a hearing: “We are pleased with the outcome of the hearing today. We continue to disagree with the allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole any ideas or code to build Facebook. We intend to honor the judge’s request not to comment further in the media and will continue to vigorously defend this case in court.” This comes after presiding federal judge signaled he thought the suit was merely an effort to extract payment from Facebook, saying that “dorm room chitchat does not make a contract.” He gave the plaintiffs two weeks to file a revised complaint.

AideRSS puts article quality under microscope: AideRSS, of Waterloo, Ontario, is launching an online service where you can sort, track and filter RSS feeds. You can see how many times an online article has been commented on, “dugg” on Digg, tracked in Bloglines and how it has fared in a variety of other social news. VentureBeat’s RSS performance here. We played around with it and found some other features handy, like a way to import feeds from Google Reader and other feed readers so you can analyze all of your favorite blogs and web sites.

Toyota introduces a plug-in hybrid vehicle that you can plug in to an electrical outlet — It will introduce the car in Japan first, and test it in the U.S. The car will use “good enough” nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) batteries and have an eight-mile all-electric cruising range. (Details here)

GreenFuel Technologies, the alternative fuel company that had problems with its algae production, has raised a $5.5 million bridge loan — It is led by Access Industries, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Polaris Venture Partners (Bob Metcalfe’s company). Metcalfe last month became interim CEO of Cambridge-based GreenFuel after a series of setbacks sent the firm reeling, forcing layoffs and causing the company to scramble for additional financing. (Source Xconomy)

Google keeps buying stakes in Indian investing firms — Google has joined the investors of Delhi’s Band of Angels (BOA), we’re hearing from Sahad of VC Circle. Google had recently acquired 30 per cent of Ventureast TeNet Fund II for $3.75 million. Google had also previously invested as a limited partner in two early stage funds — Erasmic Venture Fund and Seed Fund. Sahad, who blogs about Indian investors, also notes that Canaan Partners, another valley firm that began investing in India lately, has invested in career-focused professional networking site TechTribe in a sub-$10 million round including Silicon Valley’s The Entrepreneur’s Fund III and Miven Venture Partners.

Tech blogger Om Malik is launching a television show with video site Revision3 — AllthingsD reporter Kara Swisher has the news. His first three interviews, to air weekly for about 10 minutes, are with RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser; Seagate’s Bill Watkins; and entrepreneur James Hong of HotorNot fame.

Roundup of the latest Silicon Valley action:

Browster, dies — The web 2.0 carnage is beginning to pile up. This week’s casualty is San Francisco’s Browster, the company that wanted to save you time by popping up a little image of a page when you scrolled over a link — letting you avoid clicking. It focused on search results at Google, but never found a way to make money. It munched through $5.8 million in funding from Advanced Technology Ventures, Vanguard Ventures, First Round Capital, and individual investors. (Via GigaOm.)

Amazon.com invests $10 million into Wikia — We reported last month that Amazon.com had invested in Wikia, the for-profit wiki company that is about to launch a user-directed search engine on the same principles as Wikipedia. At the time, the amount was confidential, but the deal has been been filed with the SEC, and reported by PE Week. This brings Wikia’s total investment to $14 million.

Dash, why not give us a choice? — Lot’s of publicity about the move by Dash, the car navigation system that hooks you up to the Internet, to sign a deal with Yahoo. Using Yahoo’s local search, users can find restaurants and other places easier. The idea isn’t new, because Dash told us in August it planned to go with either Yahoo or Google. (Here’s our first mention of Dash). But if your strategy is to give people an Internet connection — and thus be more open than the closed incumbent navigator players — why not give people a choice? We realize that it helps to configure search especially for the driver, and this may be a way to make money, but some of us have gotten used to Google and Ask City, both of which offer competitive, and in some ways arguably better (scroll to bottom), services.

Techdirt has raised funding — Techdirt, one of our favorite blogs, has launched an analyst business, and has raised $600,000 in new funding from six investors and from its own five-person founding team, reports PEHub, citing SEC documents. We wrote about the ten-year-old company here, when it launched its latest analyst offering — which lets its corporate clients pay for expert advice from analyst bloggers in Techdirt’s network.

India’s private equity boom — Private equity firms invested a record $7.5 billion in about 300 in India during 2006, according to a study by Venture Intelligence. That’s more than three times more than 2005, which itself was a record. (See info here.) Venture capitalists poured $1.7 billion into 125 Indian companies during 2006, up from $1.1 billion invested into 70 companies during 2005, according to Thomson Financial. More here on trends, though we differ with Haislip’s analysis, which suggests the jump is due to regulations. Regulations or not, India’s growing middle class makes it a very attractive place to invest.

Marty, the repo man, not doing so well — You may recall Marty Pichinson, the fast-talking clean up man who moved from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley to shutter dot-bombs and negotiate away their assets with impressive rapid-fire skill. We followed him around in 2001, and so know him more than most. We almost got in an accident while driving in a passenger seat with Marty — he veered into a neighboring lane on Hwy 101, while talking on two phones and tapping on his PDA — all in the name of selling more of said assets. Our story about him even won an award from the Peninsula Press Club, and was picked up nationwide by other media. Marty has since become famous, but sadly for him, that bites him when the economy is relatively rosy.

Europe, forever divided — The Europeans will always find something to quibble about. When it comes to the world’s sexiest business — search — French are going to back their Quaero, while Germans prefer their Theseus. Good summary of the differences here.

Foreign jurisdiction perplexes U.S. companies — Brazilian judge orders YouTube to shut down for showing a local model having sex with her boyfriend on beach (YouTube is apparently removing it, but people keep putting it back up), while Netherlands bans the high-tech scooter, the Segway, simply for making riders lean back to brake.