Anacor takes $50M to treat fungal infections
Anacor Pharmaceuticals, a Palo Alto, Calif. firm working on topical treatments for fungal infections in nails, just got a $50 million infusion in a fifth round of funding. This is pretty good news for a company that had to withdraw its IPO filing just two weeks ago due to poor market conditions.
This brings its total capital raised to $87 million, but the recent money is a big jump from the $5 million fourth-round it raised… Continue Reading
Drug developer Anacor cancels IPO plans
Biotech firm Anacor Pharmaceuticals has withdrawn its filing to go public after an arduous 16-month wait (unprecedented for health care enterprises, reports VentureWire). The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company says the market is not optimal to hit its target of $57.5 million in the sale.
Anacor, currently working on a therapy to treat nail fungal infections, had earmarked $49 million of that sum for further research and development of its lead drug candidate. It had already struck… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Thursday, Aug. 23, 2007
(UPDATED at 6:30am PT on Friday: See below.)
Featured companies: DNA2.0, Globus Medical, Inotek Pharmaceuticals, Operon Biotechnologies, PleuraFlow
Globus Medical raises $110M for spinal implants — Globus Medical, an Audubon, Pa., developer of spinal implants, raised $110 million in a fifth financing round. Investors included Clarus Ventures, AIG SunAmerica and other large, institutional private-equity funds.
Some have called this the largest venture-capital funding of the year — by a grand total of $1.65. That’s one dollar and sixty-five cents. No… Continue Reading
NephroGenex raises $3.3M for kidney disease
Cary, N.C.-based NephroGenex, a biotech developing personalized therapies for kidney disease, raised $3.3 million of an expected $26.8 million first funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required), citing an SEC filing (no link available). There’s another report that cites PE Wire here.
Care Capital, BioStratum and Vanderbilt University are all 10 percent investors in the company, according to VentureWire.
NephroGenex’s aim is to tease apart a variety of different diseases that are generally lumped together as “kidney disease”… Continue Reading