VentureBeat

Featured companies: Asteres, HemaQuest Pharmaceuticals, Nanosphere, Novalar Pharmaceuticals, Tranzyme Pharma

(UPDATED: Expanded items for Nanosphere, HemaQuest and Transzyme. Moved Novalar to a separate item here.)

Diagnostic maker Nanosphere prices IPO at low end of range, raises up to $113M — Nanosphere, a Northbrook, Ill., biotech focused on nanotech-derived diagnostics, priced its IPO at $14 a share, at the low end of its estimated range. The company, which could sell as many as eight million shares, stands to raise up to $112.7 million in the offering, which values the company at as much as $309.4 million.

Nanosphere is focused on molecular diagnostics that gauge the likelihood of problems such as blood clots or a patient’s likely response to a particular medication. Our previous coverage of the company is here and here.

HemaQuest draws $20M to fight blood disease — Newton, Mass.-based HemaQuest Pharmaceuticals (no Web site), a biotech focused on new drugs for blood disorders such as sickle-cell anemia, raised $20 million in a first funding round. Investors included De Novo Ventures, Forward Ventures and Lilly Ventures.

The company said the funds will support clinical trials of its first drug candidate, an oral treatment for sickle-cell anemia and beta thalassemia. Both diseases involve disorders of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying molecule found in red blood cells. HemaQuest said it intends to submit plans for a human test of its drug candidate, which it didn’t identify, by the end of this year.

Novalar raises $30M for dental-numbness reverser — See the full story here.

Tranzyme Pharma pulls in $20M for GI drugs — Tranzyme Pharma, a Research Triangle Park, N.C., biotech developing new drugs for gastrointestinal and metabolic disorders, raised $20 million in a third funding round. Investors included H.I.G. Ventures, Thomas, McNerney & Partners, Quaker BioVentures, and BDC Venture Capital.

Tranzyme’s lead drug candidate aims to treat severe gastroparesis, a condition in which food stops moving through the stomach, and ileus, a form of obstruction in the bowel. That drug, designated TZP-101, recently began mid-stage human trials in both conditions.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Self-dispensing drug machine maker Asteres pulls in $8M (VentureWire, sub req’d)

(UPDATED at 7:40pm PT: See below.)

Featured companies: Adnexus Therapeutics, BioForm Medical, Confirma, Cardiovascular Systems, Mirabilis Medica, Neuromed Pharmaceuticals, PlaCor, Seno Medical Instruments, Vibrynt

BioForm Medical files $115M IPO for “medical aesthetics” — BioForm Medical, a San Mateo, Calif., developer of wrinkle fillers and other products for cosmetic procedures, filed to raise $115 million in an initial offering. BioForm’s major customers are plastic surgeons and dermatologists.

BioForm, however, takes pains to describe itself differently on its Web site. There, BioForm says it is “a privately-held medical device company developing and commercializing injectable implant products for soft and hard tissue augmentation.” It goes on to note that its main product, Radiesse, is marketed for “radiographic tissue marking, vocal cord insufficiency, craniofacial augmentation, and outside of the U.S for facial soft tissue augmentation.”

That all sounds pretty serious — nothing like expensive wrinkle treatments, right? But in its IPO filing, where stretching the truth could get it in trouble with the SEC, BioForm describes itself straightforwardly as “a medical aesthetics company focused on developing and commercializing products that are used by physicians to enhance a patient’s appearance.” As for Radiesse, it notes that “[w]e obtained FDA pre-market approval, or PMA, for our key commercial application of Radiesse, the correction of moderate to severe facial wrinkles and folds in December 2006.”

BioForm is not profitable, and its losses have widened over the past three years, although sales have increased over that period. The company accumulated a net loss of $35.2 million from 2005 to 2007 (its fiscal year ends June 30).

Stealthy Vibrynt raises $16M for medical devices — Vibrynt, a Mountain View, Calif., medical-device maker that has just spun out of the ExploraMed device incubator, raised $16 million in a first funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required), citing regulatory filings. Investors included New Enterprise Associates and Delphi Ventures; NEA backs ExploraMed.

The financing closed in April. Vibrynt doesn’t have a Web site and hasn’t yet disclosed details about its technology.

Cardiovascular Systems raises $12.5M against peripheral artery disease — Cardiovascular Systems, a St. Paul, Minn., device maker focused on the removal of arterial plaque, raised $12.5 million in a still-open extension of its first funding round, VentureWire reports. The funding reportedly came from “some” of the company’s original investors, a group that includes Easton Capital Group, Maverick Capital, Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners and ITX Institutional Holdings.

Cardiovascular Systems has developed a device that essentially “sands” artery-blocking deposits known as plaque from the inside surfaces of blood vessels. The catheter-based device uses a rotating, diamond-coated head to scrub plaque from arteries. The company told VentureWire it is anticipating FDA clearance of the device within the next few weeks.

Mirabilis Medica gets $10.5M for fibroid treatment — Seattle’s Mirabilis Medica, a medical-device company focused on women’s health, raised $10.5 million in an extension to its first funding round. Investors included Arboretum Ventures, Split Rock Partners, Dow Venture Capital, and an individual investor.

Mirabilis Medica uses high-intensity, focused ultrasound to destroy tumors such as uterine fibroids by denaturing cellular proteins and causing cells to collapse into piles of goo. The company says the device may ultimately useful in other applications as well, but hasn’t yet specified them.

Confirma gets $2 million for medical-image analysis — Bellevue, Wash.-based Confirma, a maker of computer systems that automate the interpretation of medical images, raised $2 million in bridge financing on its way to a potential $15 million third round, VentureWire reports. Fluke Venture Partners provided the funding. Confirma’s first product analyzes MRI breast scans, and the company plans to launch a similar system for prostate MRIs later this year.

PlaCor receives $3.5M for blood diagnostics — Plymouth, Minn.-based PlaCor, which just named a new CEO yesterday (see the last item in our briefing here), has also raised $3.5 million in a second funding round, VentureWire reports. Funding was provided by “accredited angel investors,” the company told VentureWire. PlaCor develops diagnostic tests of platelet reactivity, which can help physicians monitor patient response to blood-thinning drugs that help prevent or break up clots.

Neuromed raises $53M, some from mystery investors – Vancouver’s Neuromed Pharmaceuticals, battered earlier this month after it discontinued work on a new pain drug in collaboration with Merck (see our coverage in the third item of this daily briefing), raised $53.3 million in a fifth funding round. The company didn’t disclose the lead investors or new investors in the round, acknowledging only “significant participation” from existing investors including MPM Capital, James Richardson & Sons, Neuro Discovery LP, GrowthWorks Capital (Working Opportunity Fund), BDC Venture Capital, CMDF, and the Royal Bank of Canada.

Neuromed, whose partnership with Merck continues, also recently licensed another experimental pain drug from a J&J subsidiary. BioWorld has more here.

Adnexus files for $86M IPO to develop new targeted biologics — Adnexus Therapeutics, a Waltham, Mass., biotech working on a new class of drugs it calls “Adnectins,” filed to raise as much as $86.25 million in an IPO. The company’s Adnectin drug candidates are engineered proteins derived from human fibronectin, a natural protein that plays a role in wound healing and binding cell receptor proteins.

Adnexus has seven drug candidates in development, only one of which has proceeded to human testing. The company intends to target cancer and other conditions such as autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease. (See our earlier coverage of the company in the fourth item of this daily briefing.)

Seno receives $2M for early cancer detection — Seno Medical Instruments, a San Antonio, Tex., device maker focused on early cancer detection, received $2 million from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. Seno is developing “opto-acoustic” technology designed to indicate the presence of new blood vessels that feed tumors.

UPDATE (10:15am PT): Added items on Mirabilis Medica, Confirm and PlaCor.

UPDATE REDUX (7:40pm PT): Added items on Neuromed, Adnexus and Seno.

(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.

(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.