VentureBeat

Featured companies: Bind Biosciences, Clarus Therapeutics, HealOr, HistroRx, Plasticell, SpinalMotion, Xenome, Yaupon Therapeutics

UPDATED: Expanded items on SpinalMotion and Plasticell. Previous items on Evalve and Excaliard have been expanded into standalone posts here and here.

Spinal-disc maker SpinalMotion arranges $14M loan facility — SpinalMotion, a Mountain View, Calif., developer of artificial spinal discs, arranged a $14 million “loan facility” — sort of a line of credit — with GE Healthcare Financial Services. The company last raised $20 million in a third round in September 2006, and to date has raised a total of $44.2 million in venture funding, according to VentureWire (subscription required).

SpinalMotion’s artificial cervical and and lumbar discs are designed to provide alternatives to spinal-fusion surgery or an approved artificial disc (J&J’s Charite) for degenerative-disc conditions. Both are being tested in large clinical trials, and the company said in June that both trials are now fully enrolled.

I wasn’t able to reach anyone at the company — the release itself was issued by GE Healthcare — and so haven’t had a chance to ask why SpinalMotion decided to take on debt rather than pursuing another venture-financing round. The obvious answer would be that management believes the company can get better terms from either VCs, IPO investors or potential acquirers following the release of those clinical-trial results, and is willing to take on debt to tide the company over until the data is in.

The obvious risk, meanwhile, is that if either or both trials go sour, the company will be in much more of a hole if it plans to raise new funds. It’s a calculated gamble, one whose outcome will be interesting to observe.

Plasticell takes in £690K for stem-cell work — Plasticell, a U.K. biotech hoping to develop new drugs that mimic the regenerative effects of stem cells, has pulled in £690,000 ($1.4 million) in the company’s first institutional funding round.

The Capital Fund, a London-based VC outfit, provided £250,000 of that funding, while unidentified existing invested accounted for another £440,000. Plasticell also received a £1.1 million grant from the U.K. government in January to develop robotic systems for culturing stem cells.

Plasticell hasn’t yet made much of a splash, although its scientific advisors include some heavy hitters in the U.K. stem-cell research community, including Sir Martin Evans, who shared the Nobel Prize last month. The company is pursuing two complementary objectives: Culturing stem cells in order to identify the various biochemical signals that cause them to “differentiate” into various types of body tissue, and searching for drugs that might mimic or alter those signals in both stem cells and normal cells.

Such work could have a variety of applications, such as cancer treatments or “regenerative medicine” that restores tissues damaged by disease or injury. In a way, the company’s efforts parallel work by other research teams that recently reported a way of “reprogramming” normal cells to convert them into stem cells (see our coverage).

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Exiqon to buy cancer-diagnostics startup Oncotech for $45M (GenomeWeb, reg req’d)
• Australia’s Xenome raises $10M for new peptide drugs (release)
• Nanoparticle-drug maker Bind Biosciences receives $16M (release)
• Yaupon takes in $16M for cancer, CNS drugs (release)
• Hormone-drug maker Clarus draws $8M (release)
• Israel’s HealOr receives $8M for skin-care drugs (release)
• HistoRx names Rana Gupta as CEO (release)

Featured companies: Concentric Medical, Vertebration, Vision RT, Kemeta

Clotbuster Concentric Medical files for $69M IPO — Mountain View, Calif.-based Concentric Medical, which makes and markets devices for removing dangerous blood clots from the brains of stroke patients, filed to raise up to $69 million in an initial offering. The company’s devices consist of catheters that are threaded into the body’s circulatory system via the femoral artery in the groin and passed into the brain to the site of the clot. There, a wire at the end of the catheter coils around the clot, permitting its removal.

Although Concentric’s device has been approved since 2004, the company is still losing money despite briskly expanding sales. The company posted a $6.9 million net loss in 2006, down from $9.7 million in 2004. Sales rose to $11.3 million from $2.3 million over the same period.

Concentric’s clot-removal device is based on technology licensed from the University of California. Among the risk factors noted by the company is the fact that the device can malfunction and sometimes causes additional injury to the delicate blood vessels of the brain. Concentric said it has submitted 82 medical-device reports to the FDA as of June 30; in 56 of those events, the device’s tip fractured, and in 22 instances a blood vessel was damaged.

Spinal implant maker Vertebration raises $750K — Vertebration, a Columbus, Ohio, developer of spinal implants, raised a $750,000 seed round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The funding consisted of $500,000 in venture debt arranged by NCT Ventures and a $250,000 private placement to angel investors.

The company may seek a first funding round of $3.5 million to $10 million later this year, according to VentureWire. Its Web site should be active next week.

From the VentureWire piece:

Columbus, Ohio-based Vertebration plans to take its first product, a spinal implant called Xycor, to market in late October. The implant works to restore the height and space between two vertebrae or a partial vertebra through a minimally invasive procedure. Xycor received 510(k) clearance from the Food and Drug Administration earlier this year. Vertebration is developing instruments to accompany its lead product, as well as other products for the spine market.

Vision RT gets $500K for radiation imaging — Vision RT, a London-based developer of three-dimensional imaging tools for guiding radiation therapy, raised $495,725 (£250,000) from the Capital Fund, VentureWire reports. The company’s tools provide a three-dimensional model of a patient in order to properly direct radiation-beam treatment for cancer and other diseases.

Kemeta takes equity investment from Dow Chemical for breath analysis — Kemeta, a Phoenix developer of breath-analysis systems, said Dow Chemical took a minority equity stake in the company. Details of the transaction weren’t disclosed.

Kemeta aims to produce a palm-sized analyzer that can measure breath acetone, a by-product of burning fat, for use in obesity. The sensor technology was originally developed by Dow.

Although I try to stay on top of events in the life sciences, announcements do sometimes manage to slip through the cracks. Some days, in fact, I end up triaging. Because the roots of this site — not to mention many of its readers — are in Silicon Valley, Bay Area events are a priority. Then come announcements from the rest of the U.S., then Asia, then Europe. Also, smaller or partial fundings tend to take a backseat.

Looking back over my notes — it’s the only way I keep anything straight — I see quite a few of these orphans have piled up. So for the sake of completeness, I’m inaugurating this occasional feature to recap the fundings, mergers and IPOs that got away from me. I’ll put all the details below the fold, so only forge ahead if you’re really interested. RSS subscribers, unfortunately, are going to get the whole thing anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

NanoBioDesign, a London developer of systems that screen experimental drugs against key liver enzymes, raised $1 million (£500,000) to support manufacturing of its protein-chip devices. The funding was provided by the Imperial Innovations Group and the Capital Fund.

NanoBioDesign is focused on a class of liver enzymes known as cytochrome P450, which play an important role in metabolism. Various forms of these enzymes can greatly impact the effectiveness of drugs, depending on how quickly they break down the drugs and clear them from the bloodstream. The company’s approach immobilizes these enzymes on an electrode that can then measure an electric disturbance if the enzyme is activated, allowing a precise readout of the extent to which different P450 variants react with a drug.

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