VentureBeat

Featured companies: 23andMe, APT Pharmaceuticals, Hyperion Therapeutics, Isis Biopolymer, Virogenomics

UPDATED at 10:30am PT.

APT Pharma raises $22M for transplant and heart drugs — Burlingame, Calif.’s APT Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharma currently focused on a drug to fight organ-transplant rejection, raised $22 million in an extension of its first funding round. Investors included Versant Ventures, Great Point Partners, Vivo Ventures and Charter Life Sciences.

APT, which acquires its drug candidates instead of developing them itself, has raised a total of $30 million to date. Its lead candidate is an inhalable form of the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine, called Pulmoniq, which is intended to prevent rejection and improve survival in lung-transplant patients.

23andMe reveals size of first funding round — PE Hub reports that Google-backed 23andMe has raised $8.9 million, citing a regulatory filing. Apparently, however, this isn’t new funding. When the personal-genomics startup (see our coverage here and here) announced its funding back in May, all we knew was that Google had invested $3.9 million, with unspecified participation by Mohr-Davidow Ventures and New Enterprise Associates bringing the round to somewhere around $10 million. I’m now told that the $8.9 million figure is just the total of that first round, which also included participation of some angel investors.

Hyperion Therapeutics drums up $15M in debt — The South San Francisco specialty pharma pulled in $15 million in debt financing from Comerica Bank and Life Sciences Capital. Hyperion, which raised $40 million in equity just a month ago (see our coverage in the first item here), in-licenses drug candidates from other companies and runs them through clinical trials.

The company also announced a slate of senior executives, many of them from Ucyclyd, a Medicis Pharmaceutical unit with which Hyperion recently concluded a licensing deal. Hyperion’s lead drug candidates address a gastrointestinal disorder and liver disease.

Drug-delivery company Isis Biopolymer draws $1.5M — Isis Biopolymer, a Warwick, R.I., device maker focused on a new drug-delivery technology, raised $1.5 million in seed funding, VentureWire reports (subscription required). GP Bullhound of London provided the funding.

Isis is exploring ways of using electrophoresis, a low-level electric current that can theoretically drag large, charged drug molecules across barriers like skin, as a new way of delivering drugs without needles via a patch-type device — one the company tells VentureWire is “more of a Band-Aid than an iPod.” The company has launched a $5 million first round of fundraising, and expects to begin human trials of its patch early next year.

Virogenomics gets $2M grant for bio-sensor work — NIST awarded Tigard, Ore.-based Virogenomics a $2 million grant to develop a system that tests for a variety of biological molecules at once, the company said. A closer read of the company’s press release suggests that it is developing a kind of protein chip — essentially a way of scanning for the presence of particular proteins in a sample such as blood serum — that relies on some sort of microelectronic “transducers” to signal detection.

At least from this description, it’s not really clear why this sort of technology would warrant a NIST grant, as any number of companies are developing similar-sounding protein chips. Virogenomics is something between a biotechnology firm and an incubator; the company says it licenses promising technologies and develops them in-house until it can spin them off into new startup companies. (Virogenomics strikes me as a pretty odd name for this sort of tech-development outfit, unless it’s a failed biotech that later developed a new purpose, although that’s just a guess.)

(UPDATED at 11am PT on Sunday, 8/26/07: See below.)

Featured companies: Clinical Data, Epidauros Biotechnologie, Precision Therapeutics, UMD, Zars Pharma

UMD to close $8M for menstrual pain and osteoporosis — Cincinnati’s UMD, a developer of vaginal drug-delivery technologies, expects to close up to $8 million in a fifth funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The company has backing from an undisclosed new investor, and expects former investors Charter Life Sciences and Asset Management to join the round.

UMD is developing a new version of an off-patent anti-inflammatory drug called ketorolac that can be administered on the end of a tampon for menstrual pain, and hopes to begin mid-stage human tests this year. It plans a similar delivery formulation for the active ingredient in Merck’s osteoporosis drug Fosamax, which loses patent protection this year. The company doesn’t have a Web site.

Precision Therapeutics aims to raise $81M in IPO for personalized cancer tests — Pittsburgh’s Precision Therapeutics, a developer of diagnostic tests that aim to predict patient response to chemotherapy, filed to raise $80.5 million in an initial offering. The company’s tests use biopsied tumor cells to assess the likelihood that a given drug or drug combination will be effective.

This is a fairly low-tech sort of diagnostic — as its filing makes clear, Precision basically just removes tumor cells and then starts hitting them with various drugs in the laboratory to see whether they live or die. The company has only been marketing its current test, which it calls ChemoFx, for the last year or so; although it has had ChemoFx on the market since 1997, it ceased sales activity in 2003 and didn’t resume it until last year. Revenues have been predictably anemic, as until recently Precision didn’t have an active sales force, and last year the company managed the feat of posting a gross loss, in which its cost of sales in terms of lab expenses exceeded incoming revenue.

There’s other bad news, too. Precision notes that two respected organizations — the technology-evaluation center of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and a working group of the American Society of Clinical Oncology — concluded in 2004 that “chemosensitivity/chemoresistance assays” such as ChemoFx lacked supporting data that would justify their routine use.

The company also parses several complex reimbursement decisions in a fairly convincing illustration of the risk that relatively few insurers may actually want to pay for its test. It further notes that clinical data supporting use of its test is “limited,” and although it cites the results of three studies carried out between 2002 and 2006, none of them look particularly convincing. In one of the few bright spots in its filing, Precision says it is currently conducting five additional studies, some of which appear to be fairly rigorous “prospective” studies of the diagnostic.

Zars Pharma sets IPO price target — Zars Pharma, a Salt Lake City specialty pharmaceutical company that reformulates pain drugs for delivery via skin patches, set a price range for its IPO and now seeks to raise as much as $92 million in the offering. (See our previous coverage here; the company has apparently changed its name to “Zars Pharma” from “Zars.”) The company plans to offer up to 5.75 million shares at a price of $14 to $16 apiece.

Clinical Data acquires Epidauros Biotechnologie for $11.8M — Clinical Data, a publicly traded diagnostics and personalized-medicine company in Newton, Mass., agreed to pay $11.84 million (€8.75 million) to acquire Epidauros Biotechnologie of Germany. Founded in 1997, Epidauros studies genetic factors that may determine how individuals respond to drugs.

UPDATE (11am PT on Sunday, 8/26/07): Added Clinical Data/Epidauros item.

(UPDATED at 6:40pm PT: See below.)

Featured companies: Nereus Phramaceuticals, KFx Medical, NeuroMed Pharmaceuticals, Adnexus Therapeutics, Masimo, Biofisica, Aegera Therapeutics, LymphoSign, InfuScience, Palmetto Infusion Services

Nereus Pharma raises $45M for ocean-derived cancer drugs — San Diego’s Nereus Pharmaceuticals, a biotech that searches for cancer drugs in marine microbes, raised $45 million in a follow-on to its fourth funding round.

The company features an all-star lineup of investors, which includes BankInvest, Roche Venture Fund, Astellas Venture Management, Boston Life Science Venture Corporation, Taiwan Global Biofund, Eminent Venture Capital, HBM BioVentures, Alta Partners, Forward Ventures, Advent International, GIMV, InterWest Partners and Pacific Venture Group.

From the press release:

The proceeds from the financing will be drawn down in two tranches and used to complete Phase I and begin Phase II clinical trials for Nereus’ two drug candidates. The first compound, NPI-2358, is being evaluated for the treatment of solid tumors and lymphomas in Phase I clinical trials. It is a potent, selective tumor vascular disrupting agent (VDA), a class of compounds that represents a novel approach to disrupting the intrinsic tumor blood flow, which leads to tumor cell death. NPI-2358 has favorable preclinical characteristics, such as a longer duration of action on tumor blood flow, activity against multi-drug resistant tumor cell lines and a favorable preclinical toxicology profile. The compound is one of 200 analogues that were produced after finding activity and novel chemistry from a marine fungal extract.

Nereus’ proteasome inhibitor NPI-0052 is in Phase I trials for solid tumors, lymphomas and multiple myeloma. Preclinical studies indicate that this next generation compound may be superior to Velcade(R), with broader target inhibition, faster onset of action, higher potency, oral and intravenous availability, and activity against myeloma cells resistant to Velcade(R) (bortezomib, Millennium), Thalomid(R) (thalidomide, Celgene Corporation), Revlimid(R) (lenalidomide, Celgene Corporation) and steroid therapy. NPI-0052 was derived from a marine-obligate gram-positive actinomycete (Salinispora tropica).

Rotator-cuff specialist KFx Medical raises $10M — San Diego’s KFx Medical, a Carlsbad, Calif., developer of minimally invasive repair systems for rotator-cuff injuries, raised $10 million in a second funding round. Investors included Alloy Ventures, Charter Life Sciences, Arboretum Ventures, Montreux Equity Partners, and MB Venture Partners.

It’s pretty difficult for a non-surgeon to figure out exactly how KFx’s system works better than current medical practice, but if you’re interested in a look, check it out here.

NeuroMed Pharma drops Merck work on pain drug, raises $36M — Vancouver-based NeuroMed Pharmaceuticals, a biotech focused on new pain meds, discontinued Merck-funded work on an experimental pain drug called MK-6721. The Merck collaboration, valued at as much as $475 million, will continue.

Separately, NeuroMed has raised $36 million toward a fifth funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). That round isn’t yet complete, and the investors haven’t been disclosed. The funding is designed to pay for completing late-stage human trials of a separate pain drug the company recently licensed from a J&J subsidiary.

Adnexus raises $15.5M against cancer — Adnexus Therapeutics, a Waltham, Mass., biotech developing a new class of drugs against cancer and other diseases, raised $15.5 million in a third funding round. Investors included HBM BioVentures (Cayman), Atlas Venture, Flagship Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners and Venrock. The company intends to use the proceeds to further clinical development of its lead candidate, Angiocept, which is currently in early-stage trials in cancer.

Masimo IPO raises $233 million, jumps 23% on first day — Irvine, Calif.-based Masimo, a major developer of non-invasive patient monitors, priced its IPO in the middle of its predicted range of $16 to $18 per share, raising as much as $232.9 million — just shy of the quarter-million-dollar mark we discussed here. Since the offering involved a hefty chunk of shares sold by existing shareholders, however, the company can only pocket up to $55.9 million of the proceeds. Investors received the offering warmly, pushing the stock up to $20.90 yesterday, a rise of 23 percent.

Biofisica raises $2M in venture debt for wound healing — Atlanta’s Biofisica, a medical-device maker focused on wound healing, raised $2 million in debt financing from Leader Ventures. The company makes an electrical-stimulation device designed to speed the healing of wounds, and currently sells it in the United Kingdom.

Aegera acquires LymphoSign, uniting two Canadian oncology biotechs — Aegera Therapeutics, a Montreal biotech focused on cancer, acquired Toronto’s LymphoSign, another cancer-specialized biotech, for undisclosed terms. Several shareholders also made additional investments in Aegera’s previously announced third funding round.

InfuScience acquires Palmetto Infusion Services — InfuScience, a Chicago provider of drug-infusion therapy, acquired Palmetto Infusion Services of Beaufort, S.C., for an undisclosed sum.

UPDATE (6:40pm PT): Added KFx Medical item.