VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• MRI image-analysis firm Confirma receives $18M (release)
• Specialty pharma Zogenix raises $18M (release)
• Arcion pulls in $8.8M for topical pain gel (release)
• Bayhill Therapeutics files for $87M IPO (Edgar)
• Peakdale Molecular, chemistry-services provider, raises £1M (release)
• Radiopharmaceutical maker Cellectar draws in $13M (release)
• Critical-care drug maker Ikaria names Daniel Tasse as CEO (release)
• Noxxon Pharma appoints Frank Morich as CEO (release)

MRI image-analysis firm Confirma receives $18M –Confirma, a Bellevue, Wash., developer of automated systems for medical-image analysis, received $17.5 million in a third funding round. Investors included Telegraph Hill Partners, Fluke Venture Partners, Northwest Venture Associates, Prism Ventureworks and Versant Ventures.

The company already sells image-analysis software and associated equipment for breast-cancer detection, and is developing a similar system for prostate cancer. We previously covered the company here.

Specialty pharma Zogenix raises $18M – Zogenix, a San Diego specialty pharma, raised $18 million in a new financing round. Investors included Abingworth Management, Clarus Ventures, Domain Associates and Scale Venture Partners.

Zogenix previously raised $60 million in a first funding round back in Aug. 2006, and apparently has been quiet since then. Our coverage of them is here. Zogenix is developing a needle-free injection system for pain and CNS drugs, which it licensed from Aradigm in 2006.

Bayhill Therapeutics files for $87M IPO – Bayhill Therapeutics, a Palo Alto, Calif., biotech focused on autoimmune disease, filed to raise $86.3 million in an IPO. The company aims to restore the immune system to a state of “tolerance,” theoretically defusing particular autoimmune diseases while leaving the body’s defenses intact.

Bayhill’s approach to inducing tolerance is by using small loops of DNA, known as plasmids, that code for a specific protein antigen that appears to set off the body’s attack against itself. By introducing those plasmids in such a way that they’ll be taken up and “turned on” by the immune-system’s antigen presenting cells, the company hopes to re-educate the immune system to ignore those particular proteins.

Like most novel biotechs at this stage, Bayhill’s technology is intriguing but unproven. Its lead candidate, a drug for multiple sclerosis, has completed a mid-stage, phase II trial, but the result are complex to interpret. The company’s drug is a plasmid that codes for “myelin basic protein,” or MBP, one of the immune-system’s targets in MS. In that phase II trial, however, Bayhill only tested some patients to see if they had high levels of antibody to MBP — and the company only saw a significant reduction in MS-related brain lesions among those few patients with high MBP-antibody levels.

Featured companies: AerovectRx, Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Harmony Information Systems, Intelligent Hospital Systems, Merrion Pharmaceuticals, Syntaxin, SymBio Pharmaceuticals

UPDATED: Expanded items on Harmony Info, SymBio Pharma and Merrion Pharma, added Dicerna item.
UPDATE REDUX: Added Syntaxin item.

U.K. biotech Syntaxin raises £16M for pain and nervous-system drugs — Syntaxin, a U.K. biotech focused on drugs that affect cell secretion, raised £16 million ($33.2 million) in a second funding round. The company’s release is here.

Investors in the round included SR One, the venture capital arm of GlaxoSmithKline; Life Science Partners; Abingworth; Johnson & Johnson Development; and Quest for Growth. Syntaxin is developing drugs derived from bacterial toxins that block the release of chemicals known as neurotransmitters, which may be useful in treating pain, respiratory disease, neurological problems and obesity and related metabolic disorders.

Harmony Info, a healthcare IT provider, raises $28M to fund acquisition and expand sales — Reston, Va.-based Harmony Information Systems, a maker of healthcare software for government agencies and nonprofits, raised $28 million in a second funding round consisting of equity and debt. Investors included JMI Equity, Updata Partners, ORIX Venture Finance and Comerica Bank.

On Monday, Harmony announced the acquisition of rival Synergy Software Technologies for undisclosed terms. Harmony provides IT systems that handle electronic medical records, billing and insurance-claims management.

Japan’s SymBio Pharma closes in on ¥2B funding — Tokyo’s SymBio Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharma founded in 2005, is near closing a ¥2 billion ($17.4 million) third round of funding, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The company is focused on acquiring and developing drugs for cancer, blood disease and autoimmune conditions.

Co-founder Lowell Sears, a former Amgen CFO and now CEO of Sears Capital Management, has long been active in the Asian pharmaceuticals market. From VentureWire:

He was a founding investor, for instance, in Peninsula Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Alameda, Calif.-based company that licensed late-stage antibiotics from Japanese companies. Johnson & Johnson acquired Peninsula in 2005, and Forest Laboratories Inc. bought Peninsula spinout Cerexa Inc. in January.

Sears and Fuminori Yoshida, whom Sears once hired to be president of Amgen’s Japanese unit, started SymBio to do the reverse of Peninsula by acquiring Asian product rights.

Like JapanBridge, an MPM Capital-founded company we wrote about here, SymBio essentially aims to acquire drugs or drug candidates from elsewhere in order to win regulatory approval and sell them in Japan.

Irish specialty pharma Merrion slashes IPO range — Dublin’s Merrion Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharma we last checked in on over the weekend, sharply lowered its expected IPO range. The company, which had hoped to sell as many as 4.6 million shares (listed in the U.S. as American Depositary Shares) for $10 to $12, now expects only $6 to $7 per ADS.

That lowers Merrion’s maximum IPO take to $32.2 million, down from an earlier $55.2 million, and gives the company a post-offering market capitalization of up to $122.9 million. Merrion rejiggers existing drugs to make them easier to take by mouth.

New RNA-interference biotech Dicerna shoots for $13M, aims to work around RNAi patents — Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a stealthy, Boston-based biotech in the field of RNA interference, aims to raise $13 million in a first funding round, the In Vivo blog reports. The company, co-founded by John Rossi of Duarte, Calif.’s City of Hope National Medical Center and Mark Behlke of Integrated DNA Technologies, is focused on making new drugs via the “gene-silencing” properties of RNAi while sidestepping a patent thicket that has grown up around the technology. The company expects to close its funding in November.

Unless you’re a nucleic-acid chemist (or a patent lawyer focused on same), the details of Dicerna’s strategy are most likely beside the point, although I’m sure the In Vivo folks would welcome your attention if you’re really interested. Suffice to say that the company’s founders believe they’re found a new way to build these gene-silencing molecules that isn’t covered by some of the fundamental patents in the field. If that’s true — and no one will really know for years, if ever — it could spark new attention from Big Pharma and other biotechs that have so far sat out the increasingly frantic, and expensive, race to make RNAi drugs.

As with any early-stage technology, it’s helpful to bear in mind that no one has yet demonstrated that RNAi molecules can even work as safe and effective drugs, much less that they’ll be the magic bullet that some have claimed. Still, a lot of money has been sloshing around the field recently (see our coverage in the third item here), and there’s little doubt that deep-pocketed folks still on the sidelines will want to at least check out Dicerna’s claims.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• IH Systems pulls in $7.6M for robot syringe-filler (release)
• AerovectRx names Ed Cannon as new CEO (release)

(UPDATED at 7:10pm PT: See below.)

Featured companies: NeurAxon, VytronUS, Avila Therapeutics, CardioNet, Ventana Medical Systems, CytoLogix, PlaCor

NeurAxon raises $32M for pain drugs — You have to hand it to Waltham, Mass.-based NeurAxon — the company certainly knows how to keep itself in the news. Today, it announced it has raised $32 million in a second funding round, a week after it reported a positive early-stage trial result for its experimental migraine treatment.

Investors included Delphi Ventures, OrbiMed Advisors, BDC Venture Capital, Genesys Capital Partners, H.I.G. Ventures, NeuroVentures Fund, Ventures West Capital and Lawrence Bloch, NeurAxon’s CEO.

Stealthy VytronUS gets $6.6M — Los Altos, Calif.-based VytronUS, a secretive medical-device company, raised $6.6 million in a first funding round, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Delphi Ventures and New Enterprise Associates provided the funds.

Avila Therapeutics receives undisclosed first funding — Avila Therapeutics, a Waltham, Mass., biotech focused on cancer and viral disease, raised an undisclosed first funding round in February, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Investors included Abingworth Management, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Polaris Venture Partners. The company doesn’t have a Web site.

Wireless heart monitor CardioNet files to raise $150M in an IPO — CardioNet, a San Diego medical-device firm focused on wireless heartbeat monitors, filed to raise up to $150 million in an IPO. The company still isn’t profitable, although its sales appear to be set to double this year.

The In Vivo blog has some additional insight into CardioNet’s rather convoluted funding history.

Defunct device maker wins patent case against Ventana — CytoLogix, a failed medical-device startup formerly based in Cambridge, Mass., won a patent-infringement suit against publicly traded Ventana Medical Systems of Tuscon, Ariz. A jury awarded CytoLogix $10.8 million in damages, but said Ventana wasn’t liable for related antitrust claims. CytoLogix attorneys have said they will seek to have the damages paid to the company’s shareholders, VentureWire reports.

From VentureWire:

CytoLogix alleged in the patent litigation that Ventana learned about CytoLogix’s proprietary intellectual property by gaining access to a confidential business plan that CytoLogix had distributed in the mid-1990s as part of its search for venture capital. This allegation stemmed from an admission made by Ventana’s then-Chairman Jack Schuler, as part of an address he made in October 1999, at a U.S. Trust investment conference in Tarrytown, N.Y.

In the speech, Schuler described in detail how years before, Ventana had made use of information in the business plan. A 2002 Barron’s article about the litigation quotes him in the speech as having acknowledged the competition in a major way.

CytoLogix sold its business operations to Dako in 2002, and currently exists only to pursue the litigation. Ventana, meanwhile, is trying to fend off an unsolicited takeover offer from Roche.

The original Barron’s article on the lawsuit is here, and there’s a little more detail on the decision in this AP story.

PlaCor names new CEO — PlaCor, a Plymouth, Minn., developer of blood-cell diagnostics, named John Reinke as CEO, effective Sept. 4. PlaCor is developing diagnostic tests of platelet reactivity intended to determine patient response to anticoagulant treatment following serious blood-clot incidents, which can lead to heart attacks or strokes. Current CEO Bill Haworth will become the company’s chief scientific officer.

UPDATE (7:10pm PT): Added items on Ventana/CytoLogix lawsuit and PlaCor.