VentureBeat

Featured companies: Akermin, Fluxion Biosciences, iCardiacTechnologies, Wellocities

UPDATED: Expanded items on Fluxion, Akermin, and Wellocities.

Fluxion Bio draws in $6.9M for cell-analysis tools — Fluxion Biosciences, a San Francisco developer of cellular-analysis tools, raised $6.9 million in a second funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Investors included Kodiak Venture Partners, Claremont Creek Ventures and Life Science Angels.

Fluxion takes the idea of running chemical reactions against living cells — a key step in screening and analyzing the activity of drug candidates — to its logical conclusion with a system designed to measure biochemical changes involving, and sometimes within, a single cell. The company’s first microfluidic system is intended to allow researchers to study cells that adhere to surfaces, such as platelets that stick to arterial walls in the formation of plaque, and biofilms, which are drug-resistant sheets excreted by bacteria for protection.

Fluxion is also working on tools for studying electrochemical signaling within cells, which the company hopes to launch next year. The current financing may also make it possible for Fluxion to launch a third instrument that will image individual cells while they float in solution. Existing cell-imaging systems only work when cells are anchored in place.

The company could be profitable as early as 2010, Fluxion executives told VentureWire. It has raised a total of $7.4 million since its founding in 2005.

Bioenzyme-catalyst co. Akermin raises $5M — Akermin, a St. Louis developer of new biocatalytic enzymes, raised $5 million in a second tranche of its first funding round. Investors included Prolog Ventures, OnPoint Technologies, Chrysalix Energy and the St. Louis Arch Angels.

Akermin works with catalytic enzymes — molecules that speed particular chemical reactions — made via biotechnology that could replace precious-metal catalysts now used in fuel cells. The company is developing prototype “biofuel cells” and thin-fuel cells the company refers to as “bio-batteries.” Enzymes should theoretically be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than metal catalysts.

Fuel cells, which could theoretically replace conventional batteries and engines in some applications, are one of those clean technologies that have been on the table for decades in one form or another. However, existing technologies generally aren’t considered cost- or energy-effective when compared to burning fossil fuels or using traditional batteries.

Akermin is part of a wave of startups working on overcoming the difficulties in making fuel cells. Another is Bloom Energy, a secretive Silicon Valley startup that has nevertheless received plenty of press.

Akermin’s technology is a polymer “stabilizer” for these enzymes that’s designed to immobilize them, stabilize them and enhance their operating lifetime. The company has raised a total of just under $8.5 million since its founding.

Online health service Wellocities draws $1M — Toronto’s Wellocities, a diabetes-focused health-information site, raised $1 million in seed funding to create a more general online health service for Canadians. XDL Capital Group provided the funding.

The company didn’t say much more about its online strategy or how it would differ from a host of new, mostly U.S.-based sites that offer everything from detailed health information to physician directories to patient communities. In diabetes, Wellocities provides an online community and ways for diabetics to track their progress in maintaining control of their weight and blood-sugar levels.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• iCardiac raises undisclosed round for electrocardiogram cardiac-risk systems (release)

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 beyond the fact that its tests are designed to provide “accurate diagnosis and prognosis” of heart disease and that it expects to reach the market next year. That’s ridiculously fast for anything that needs to move through clinical trials, so chances are good that Aviir is aiming for some sort of “home-brew” strategy in which it will conduct the tests itself instead of selling kits and reagents to clinical laboratories around the country. Home-brew tests are regulated less strictly by the FDA.

DeltaDot, biological tool maker, raises £3M — The London maker of tools for identifying and separating biomolecules drew in £3 million ($6.1 million) (PDF link) from investors in a fourth funding round, bringing the total raised in that round to £6 million. Investors included FF&P Private Equity, Imperial Innovations, NPI Ventures, Sitka Health Fund VCT and London Technology Fund.

DeltaDot, which spun out of the Imperial College of Science, Medicine and Technology, uses technologies from high-energy physics to measure the ultraviolet-light absorption of molecules and then applies signal-processing algorithms to identify them.

Aveo Pharma raises $5M in broader deal with OSI Pharma — Cambridge, Mass.-based Aveo Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing targeted cancer drugs, raised $5 million in equity and received another $10 million in cash as part of a broader development partnership with publicly traded OSI Pharmaceuticals. The deal will also include payments for future milestones and royalties, if any, although the companies didn’t estimate their potential value.

The alliance is aimed at developing drugs that target a cellular process known as “epithelial-mesenchymal transition,” a natural stage of cellular development mimicked by tumor cells as they spread, or metastasize, throughout the body. See our previous coverage of Aveo here.

Origen receives $2M grant for chicken-based antibodies — Burlingame, Calif.-based Origen Therapeutics, a company focused on developing biotech products from genetically engineered chickens, received a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding is intended to spur development of human polyclonal antibodies — which attack a variety of different protein targets instead of a single one, the way monoclonal antibodies do — that can be produced by chickens and deposited in eggs for harvesting. The first goal of the program will be to develop therapies for antibiotic-resistant hospital infections, which represent a growing threat to patients.

From the Origen press release:

Most antibody therapeutics today, such as the cancer treatments Avastin® and Herceptin® and the anti-infective Synagis®, are monoclonal antibodies that attack a single antigen target on a cell or viral surface. In contrast, when the human immune system produces antibodies against disease, it makes polyclonal antibodies capable of recognizing and attacking different antigens on the same cell, enabling that disease target to be simultaneously attacked at many different points. Thus the ability to produce fully human polyclonal antibodies on a commercial scale for use as therapeutics could take antibody-based therapies to a new level of efficacy by more closely mimicking the full potential of the natural human immune response. Until now, the production of safe and effective polyclonal antibody treatments has been hampered by the lack of an appropriate system for the development and production of such antibodies.