VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M (VentureWire)
• TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices (peHUB)
• Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M (release)
• Population Genetics takes in £3.8M for massively parallel genome studies (GenomeWeb)
• “Brain fitness” trainer Dakim raises $11M (release)
• BioIQ, home-diagnostics maker, takes in $2.5M (release)
• Hospital med-tracker Sabal Medical raises funds (release)
• Seattle’s PharmaIN gets $400K NIH grant for nanoparticle staph drug (PDF release)
• SensiGen, molecular-diagnostics developer, receives Michigan state loan (release)
• Arcus Ventures aims for $50M fund, targets cancer (VentureWire)

Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M – Zonare Medical Systems, a Mountain View, Calif., maker of ultrasound-imaging systems, raised $30 million in a recent seventh funding round, VentureWire reports. Existing investors provided the funding, a group that includes Frazier Healthcare Ventures, 3i Group, Mosaix Ventures, CB Health Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvestson, Ascension Health Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Earlybird, Saints Capital, Merrill Lynch Venture Capital and Texas Instruments.

The company said the funding should set it on the road to profitability and eventually to a hope-for IPO. Zonare makes compact ultrasound systems that can be used in sonography and for a variety of other medical diagnostic purposes.

TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices – TherOx, an Irvine, Calif., maker of oxygenation devices for treating heart attacks, raised $30 million in a tenth funding round, peHUB reports. Investors included Kleiner Perkins, Integral Capital Partners and New Science Ventures.

The startup makes devices that supersaturate blood with oxygen, then infuse that blood into areas of the heart at risk of damage from oxygen starvation due to a heart attack. TherOx has now raised over $120 million in venture funding.

Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M – San Diego’s Accumetrics, a maker of diagnostics that measure patient response to anti-platelet drugs, raised $28.8 million in a fourth round of funding. Investors included Arnerich Massena & Associates, BBT Fund, Essex Woodland Health Ventures, RiverVest, PTV Sciences, KB Partners and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.

The startup makes a system that measures how well individuals are reacting to treatment with anti-platelet drugs, which are used to prevent or help dislodge major blood clots. Since patient response can vary widely, often as a result of genetic factors (see our coverage of this sort of “personalized medicine” here), such monitoring can help doctors avoid dangerous overdoses or to switch unresponsive patients to higher doses or different drugs as necessary.

Population Genetics Technologies takes in £3.8M for massively parallel genome studies – Population Genetics Technologies, a U.K. startup devoted to technologies for studying thousands of genomes at once, raised £3.8 million ($5.9 million) in a first funding round, GenomeWeb reported. Investors included Auriga Partners, Noble Fund Managers, and Compass Genetics Investors.

The company raised £1.1 million in seed funding from the Wellcome Trust back in 2005 to aid in the development of the technology. PGT is working on a technique devised by Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner that purports to analyze genetic variation in DNA samples from thousands of individuals at once.

In this 2005 release, PGT co-founder Sam Eletr described the method as “will allow the mixing of thousands of samples in one test tube and the simultaneous interrogation [analysis] of all of them in one experiment, instead of in as many experiments as there are genomes in a population…. We expect our technology to allow handling much larger numbers of genomes than pooling does and to have the further advantage of protecting the identities of individuals involved in any population study by allocating them a code that may be kept confidential. We expect it also be applicable to any collection of DNA molecules and genomes, whether from plants, animals, micro-organisms or humans.”

PGT also named Mel Kronick, a former R&D manager at both Agilent Technologies and Applied Biosystems, as CEO.

(UPDATED at 5:55pm PT: See below.)

Featured companies: Sierra Surgical Technologies, HerbalScience Nutraceuticals, Topigen Pharmaceuticals, EKR Therapeutics, Molecular Partners, Celsense, Glucose Sensing Technologies, Falcon Genomics, Waters, Calorimetry Sciences, Parion Sciences, Gilead Sciences, Isto Technologies, Fluidnet, NABsys

Sierra Surgical raises $7.1M — Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sierra Surgical Technologies, a developer of female sterilization technology, raised $7.1 million in a first funding round, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Alta Partners and De Novo Ventures provided the funding.

Singapore’s HerbalScience raises $28M for natural extracts — HerbalScience Nutraceuticals, a Singapore-based natural-extracts company with offices in Naples, Fla., raised $28 million from the private-equity firms Aisling Capital and Weston Presidio, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The investment purchased a 25 percent stake in HerbalSciences, which makes purified extracts from various natural substances, valuing the company at $112 million.

Topigen Pharma pulls in $25M against lung disease — Montreal’s Topigen Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing inhalable drugs to treat asthma and other lung diseases, raised $25 million (C$26 million) in a third funding round. Investors included NovaQuest, MMV Financial, BDC Venture Capital, Desjardins Venture Capital, Caisse de Dépot et Placement du Québec (Caisse), T2C2/BIO 2000 and Lothian Partners 27 (sarl) SICAR.

The funding will “accelerate” mid-stage human trials for Topigen’s leading drug candidates, a small-molecule treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and an RNA inhibitor for asthma.

EKR receives over $13M, licenses opiod drug — EKR Therapeutics, a Cedar Knolls, N.J., specialty pharmaceutical company, raised more than $13 million in a private placement. Investors included Quaker BioVentures, NewSpring Capital, and ESP Equity Partners. EKR also acquired rights to DepoDur, an extended-release opioid, from Pacira Pharmaceuticals.

Switzerland’s Molecular Partners gets $15.6M for novel binding proteins — Zurich-based Molecular Partners, a biotech developing drugs based on a new class of binding proteins, raised $15.6 million (CHF18.5 million) in a first funding round. Investors included Index Ventures, BB Biotech Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Development Corp. and Endeavour.

Molecular Partners is focused on developing therapeutics proteins it calls “DARPins,” which the company says offer the same ability to stick selectively to other molecules as monoclonal antibodies, but with greater stability and ease of manufacturing. DARPins are based on the notion of “repeat proteins,” which as the name suggests are modular proteins that contain repeated elements — something like posts spaced at regular intervals along a barbed-wire fence. (See the image at left.) The protein itself ends up looking something like a string that’s been knotted at regular intervals, only much more complicated.

Repeat proteins are found in almost all species, and in nature serve to bind other proteins in order to facilitate protein-protein reactions. By shuffling the modular elements in these proteins, they can be engineered to stick to specific molecules such as cell-surface proteins, potentially making them useful as drugs. The company has a more detailed description here.

Although Molecular Partners likes to play up the advantages of DARPins (the acronym stands for “designed ankyrin repeat proteins”) over antibodies — here, for instance — there are a few disadvantages the company doesn’t mention. As large molecules, DARPins most likely won’t get inside cells, limiting their potential as drugs to interactions with free-floating and cell-surface proteins. (Monoclonal antibodies have the same limitation.) Potentially more important, however, is the fact that the effectiveness of many antibody-based drugs results from their ability to stimulate a particular immune response, not just to stick to the appropriate target. DARPins, which aren’t immune-system molecules the way antibodies are, seem unlikely to do the same.

Pittsburgh-area biotechs, device makers get $350K — The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, a public-private life-sciences investment partnership, invested $350,000 in three Pittsburgh-area life-science startups. Falcon Genomics, a developer of chip-based cancer-detection diagnostics, received $150,000. Another $100,000 went to Celsense, which uses an MRI tracing agent to image transplanted cells. The final $100,000 was invested in Glucose Sensing Technologies, which is developing a catheter-based glucose sensor for continuous blood-sugar monitoring in intensive-care units.

Waters acquires Calorimetry Sciences — Milford, Mass.-based Waters, a laboratory-instrument maker, acquired Calorimetry Sciences of Linden, Utah. Terms of the deal weren’t announced. Calorimetry Sciences, which makes high-performance devices intended to measure the heat produced or absorbed by chemical reactions, will be merged into Waters’ TA Instruments division.

Fedora Commons wins $4.9M grant for open collaboration software — Fedora Commons, a non-profit organization devoted to open-source technologies for creating and sharing digital content, received a $4.9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. From the release:

With this funding, Fedora Commons will foster an open community to support the development and deployment of open source software, which facilitates open collaboration and open access to scholarly, scientific, cultural, and educational materials in digital form. The software platform developed by Fedora Commons with Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funding will support a networked model of intellectual activity, whereby scientists, scholars, teachers, and students will use the Internet to collaboratively create new ideas, and build on, annotate, and refine the ideas of their colleagues worldwide. With its roots in the Fedora open-source repository system, developed since 2001 with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the new software will continue to focus on the integrity and longevity of the intellectual products that underlie this new form of knowledge work. The result will be an open source software platform that both enables collaborative models of information creation and sharing, and provides sustainable repositories to secure the digital materials that constitute our intellectual, scientific, and cultural history.

Parion licenses lung-disease drug to Gilead for up to $146M — Parion Sciences, a Durham, N.C., biotech focused on diseases of the mucous membranes, struck a licensing and co-development deal with Gilead Sciences for its drug P-680 worth up to $146 million. The drug, an epithelial sodium-channel inhibitor, could potentially be useful in a variety of lung diseases, including cystic fibrosis. The companies will also work to identify other similar drug candidates.

Isto Tech raises $8.8M, prepares to launch synthetic bone grafts — St. Louis’ Isto Technologies, a developer of cell-based cartilage and bone regeneration technology, raised $8.8 million in a fifth funding round as it prepares for its first product launch, VentureWire reports. Investors included Ascension Health Ventures, Alafi Capital, Life Sciences Partners, Mid-America Transplant Services and private individuals. Isto’s leading product, InQu, is a synthetic biomaterial intended to help tissues heal and bones to regenerate; Isto expects FDA approval later this year.

Fluidnet rises from ashes, raises $6.4M for IV pumps — Portsmouth, N.H.-based Fluidnet, a “reincarnation” of its bankrupt predecessor FluidSense, raised $6.4 million in a first funding round to launch a new intravenous-infusion pump next year, VentureWire reports. Cardinal Partners and Rockport Venture Partners provided the funding.

NABsys raises $750K for high-speed genome sequencing — NABsys, a Providence, R.I., startup focused on high-speed gene-sequencing technologies, raised $750,000 in seed funding, VentureWire reports. Slater Technology Fund and individual investors provided the funding, which closely follows a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

UPDATE (10:55am PT): Added items on Molecular Partners and the Pittsburgh Life-Sciences Greenhouse investments.

UPDATE REDUX (5:55 pm PT): Added items on Waters/Calorimetry Sciences, Fedora Commons, Isto Technologies, Fluidnet, NABsys.

Irvine, Calif.-based Interventional Spine raised $24 million in a third round of funding that the company says will support the launch of several new products. The company makes implants and surgical instruments for “percutaneous” spinal operations that feature narrow incisions and, theoretically, less trauma for patients. Here is the company’s release.

Ascension Health Ventures led the round, joined by Wexford Capital, HBM BioVentures, Rock Creek Capital, the MedFocus Fund and a group of current investors.

TomoTherapy, a Madison, Wis.-based maker of imaging and radiation-treatment systems for cancer therapy, raised $222.3 million in an initial offering after its shares priced higher than the company’s original range.

TomoTherapy shares, which now trade under the symbol TTPY, priced at $19, well above the company’s expected range of $15 to $17, yielding net proceeds to the company of roughly $185 million. The stock opened this morning at $24. TomoTherapy makes and sells integrated devices that provide radiation treatment for cancer guided by a built-in CT scanner.

Here’s the company’s announcement. TomoTherapy had previously raised approximately $79 million in venture capital from the likes of Venture Investors, Avalon Technology, the Endeavors Group, Open Prairie Ventures, Ascension Health Ventures and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, according to PE Wire.