VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• RNAi developer PhaseRx gets $4M of a pledged $19M (Seattle Times)
• TyRx Pharma, drug-device combo maker, raises $25M (release)
• Agennix aims at $40M for cancer drugs (VentureWire)
• Starr Life Sciences goes after $1.6M for small-animal vital-signs scanner (VW)
• CardioNet sets IPO terms, aims to raise $96M (IPOhome)

RNAi developer PhaseRx gets $4M of a pledged $19M – Investor interest in RNA interference, an ancient cellular mechanism for silencing dangerous genes, continues apace. PhaseRx, a Seattle biotech, has raised $4 million of a pledged $19 million first funding round, the Seattle Times reports.

Investors included ARCH Venture Partners, 5AM Ventures and Versant Ventures. PhaseRx will draw down the rest of the cash as it achieves various milestones.

The company seems to have neither a Web site nor a press release, and the newspaper story isn’t particularly illuminating on the subject of what PhaseRx intends to do. This Seattle Post-Intelligencer article has more details, however; apparently PhaseRx plans to use some form of synthetic polymer to help RNAi molecules cross into cells. (It’s unclear whether the polymer would also help stabilize RNAi molecules, which are fragile and prone to disintegrate before reaching their targets.)

TyRx Pharma, drug-device combo maker, raises $25M – Monmouth Junction, N.J., medical device maker TyRx Pharma raised $25 million in a new financing round. Investors included Clarus Ventures and Pappas Ventures.

TyRx focuses on implantable polymer-mesh bags meshes that have been coated with drugs of some kind. Its first product, the succinctly named AIGISrx CRMD Anti-Bacterial Envelope contains two antibiotics and is intended as an enclosure for implantable defibrillators designed to prevent infection. (UPDATE: The AEGISrx is actually the company’s most recent product. It also sells the Pivit, a similar polymer-mesh pouch for hernia surgeries. Also, the current financing round is the company’s fifth, according to VentureWire.)

Agennix aims at $40M for cancer drugs – Houston’s Agennix, a biotech developing drugs for cancer and other conditions, hopes to raise $40 million in a late-stage round to fund clinical trials, VentureWire reports. The company hopes to close the round by mid-year. Agennix is developing a bioengineered version of a human protein called talactoferrin that plays an important role in regulating the immune system. Agennix plans to use the funding to fund two late-stage, phase III trials of the drug in lung cancer.

CardioNet sets IPO terms, aims to raise $96M – San Diego’s CardioNet, a maker of wireless cardiac-monitoring devices that hopes to buck the recent trend of IPO collapses, set terms of its proposed IPO and now hopes to raise as much as $95.8 million.

The overall IPO, however, would be much larger — as large as $182.2 million, in fact — because existing CardioNet investors plan to sell more shares than the company itself. While there’s certainly precedent for this sort of thing — Masimo, another Southern California diagnostic-equipment maker, raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars in its IPO last August, the vast majority of which went to selling shareholders, conditions now are far worse than they were six months ago.

CardioNet plans to price its shares between $22 and $24 apiece. Its IPO, it turns out, is part of a complex financial arrangement whereby its last round of funding — $110 million raised last spring — didn’t put a valuation on the company. Instead, those investors received a promise of common stock in the form of shares that convert on the eve of the IPO. The down side here is that if the IPO doesn’t go well, those investors may be hosed. See here for more details.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Taligen Therapeutics raises $65M for novel anti-inflammatory drugs (release)
• Dental-implant maker Biohorizons acquires Implant Logic (release)
• MAKO Surgical sets IPO terms, seeks $94M for knee implants and robots (Edgar)
• Canada’s Medical Ventures acquires two Israeli device startups (release)
• CRO Chiltern acquires Drug Development Solutions (release)

Taligen Therapeutics raises $65M for novel anti-inflammatory drugs –Aurora, Colo.-based Taligen Therapeutics, a biotech working on targeted anti-inflammatory drugs, raised $65 million in a second round of funding. The deal is one of the largest I can recall for an early stage company that’s not in the business of licensing in drugs from other companies for immediate clinical development.

Taligen’s focus is on the “complement system,” an arm of the innate immune system that reacts to threats by triggering a biochemical cascade that attracts immune cells and causes the release of inflammatory molecules such as cytokines. This sort of inflammation tends to rage out of control in autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or type 1 diabetes, eventually leading to serious tissue damage.

Existing targeted drugs for autoimmune disease typically take aim at only a few of the proteins involved in inflammation, leaving other “pathways” untouched. Taligen hopes to defuse the complement system at a more basic level, in particular by targeting “inhibiting factor B,” a protein that plays a key role in amplifying inflammatory response. As a result, the company hopes to merely tamp down activation of the complement system, not to block it altogether, which would likely leave individuals more vulnerable to infection.

Taligen’s drug candidates, which the company says will aim to treat both systemic and local inflammation, are still in preclinical development. That’s part of what makes the enormous size of the funding round such a surprise, since big bucks like these generally aren’t necessary until a biotech begins the expensive process of conducting human tests. In fact, though, the $65 million will be “tranched” and drawn down by the company only as necessary, so Taligen won’t have a huge pile of cash on its balance sheet until it’s ready to spend it.

Investors in the round included Alta Partners, Clarus Ventures, Sanderling Ventures, Tango and High Country Venture.

MAKO Surgical sets IPO terms, seeks $94M for knee implants and robots – MAKO Surgical, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., maker of knee implants and surgical robots, set its IPO terms and now hopes to raise as much as $93.8 million in its IPO. The company hopes to offer its shares at a price between $14 and $16 apiece.

MAKO markets a minimally invasive knee-repair system consisting of implants and a robotic-arm surgical devices. The aim is to minimize trauma to the knee in arthritic patients who might otherwise be candidates for full knee replacement. The MAKO system instead allows surgeons to “resurface” worn and damaged bones and then install small implants to restore their function. The company first received FDA approval for an early version of its system in 2005, and just this month was cleared to market its second major upgrade.

The company is still hemorrhaging cash — it reported a $15.9 million net loss on revenues of $355,382 in the first nine months of 2007. Most of its revenue to date has come from sales of implants and other disposable devices. MAKO says it has received some revenue from sales of the full robotic-surgery system, but that it can’t recognize it until it delivers version 2.0 of its system. The most recent release is version 1.2.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• MRI image-analysis firm Confirma receives $18M (release)
• Specialty pharma Zogenix raises $18M (release)
• Arcion pulls in $8.8M for topical pain gel (release)
• Bayhill Therapeutics files for $87M IPO (Edgar)
• Peakdale Molecular, chemistry-services provider, raises £1M (release)
• Radiopharmaceutical maker Cellectar draws in $13M (release)
• Critical-care drug maker Ikaria names Daniel Tasse as CEO (release)
• Noxxon Pharma appoints Frank Morich as CEO (release)

MRI image-analysis firm Confirma receives $18M –Confirma, a Bellevue, Wash., developer of automated systems for medical-image analysis, received $17.5 million in a third funding round. Investors included Telegraph Hill Partners, Fluke Venture Partners, Northwest Venture Associates, Prism Ventureworks and Versant Ventures.

The company already sells image-analysis software and associated equipment for breast-cancer detection, and is developing a similar system for prostate cancer. We previously covered the company here.

Specialty pharma Zogenix raises $18M – Zogenix, a San Diego specialty pharma, raised $18 million in a new financing round. Investors included Abingworth Management, Clarus Ventures, Domain Associates and Scale Venture Partners.

Zogenix previously raised $60 million in a first funding round back in Aug. 2006, and apparently has been quiet since then. Our coverage of them is here. Zogenix is developing a needle-free injection system for pain and CNS drugs, which it licensed from Aradigm in 2006.

Bayhill Therapeutics files for $87M IPO – Bayhill Therapeutics, a Palo Alto, Calif., biotech focused on autoimmune disease, filed to raise $86.3 million in an IPO. The company aims to restore the immune system to a state of “tolerance,” theoretically defusing particular autoimmune diseases while leaving the body’s defenses intact.

Bayhill’s approach to inducing tolerance is by using small loops of DNA, known as plasmids, that code for a specific protein antigen that appears to set off the body’s attack against itself. By introducing those plasmids in such a way that they’ll be taken up and “turned on” by the immune-system’s antigen presenting cells, the company hopes to re-educate the immune system to ignore those particular proteins.

Like most novel biotechs at this stage, Bayhill’s technology is intriguing but unproven. Its lead candidate, a drug for multiple sclerosis, has completed a mid-stage, phase II trial, but the result are complex to interpret. The company’s drug is a plasmid that codes for “myelin basic protein,” or MBP, one of the immune-system’s targets in MS. In that phase II trial, however, Bayhill only tested some patients to see if they had high levels of antibody to MBP — and the company only saw a significant reduction in MS-related brain lesions among those few patients with high MBP-antibody levels.

One of the constant but unavoidable challenges in trying to control diabetes is the frequent need to test blood-sugar levels by sticking a needle into a fingertip — a step that tells diabetics when they need a snack (to raise blood glucose) or a shot of insulin (to lower it). “Lancing” fingers several times a day can render the tips so tender that it restricts ordinary activity — playing the piano, for instance — for some diabetics. While that may sound like a minor inconvenience compared to the awful side effects that uncontrolled diabetes can cause, such as gangrene and blindness, it’s often enough to keep some diabetics from testing their blood as frequently as they should.

Over the years, a number of companies have worked to minimize the pain of blood testing. (One of them, the former Therasense, was acquired by Abbott Laboratories for $1 billion in 2004.) Now Pelikan Technologies, a Palo Alto, Calif., company whose lineage traces back to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, is preparing to launch a new electronically controlled device that it claims will virtually eliminate the pain associated with lancing.

The main advantage Pelikan claims is that its lancing is computer controlled in a way that prevents undue damage to the fingertip and minimizes pain by keeping the lancet from penetrating too deeply. Most lancets, the company alleges, go right past the capillaries that carry blood and into an underlying network of nerves — thus the pain. Pelikan’s lancet is supposed to stop short at the capillary level, although the company doesn’t say exactly how. (From the Web site, it looks as though users are supposed to select the insertion depth from one of 30 different settings, which doesn’t sound terribly convenient to me.) One of the company’s diagrams is at left; for their complete description, see here.

The Pelikan Sun also supposedly creates a straighter wound that heals more easily, and withdraws the needle more slowly to reduce the amount of damage caused to surrounding tissue. The lancet takes a disk prefilled with 50 needles, which also reduces the time and inconvenience of refilling a lancet pen.

Pelikan plans to launch its lancet, which is already on sale in Australia and Europe, in the U.S. early next year. The company is also at work on a new device that will combine the lancet with an electronic glucometer that measures sugar levels, in an attempt to reduce the number of items diabetics have to carry around with them. Normally a diabetic must first stick a finger with an injector-style pen device that quickly jabs a tiny needle in and out, then dab the blood on an absorbent treated strip that slots into a glucometer. The company hopes to launch the combined device next year as well.

Pelikan just raised $69 million in a sixth funding round, and pulled in another $20 million in venture debt financing. Investors in the equity round include Clarus Ventures, HBM BioVentures, Global Life Science Ventures, Mannheim Holdings and Bio*One Capital. The debt was provided by GE Capital and Oxford Finance.

Featured companies: Azaya Therapeutics, Global Care Solutions, Oxford Immunotec, RealSelf.com, Sequoia Pharmaceuticals, Tactile Systems Technology, WellGen, Zeltiq Aesthetics

UPDATED: Expanded items on Oxford Immunotec, Zeltiq, Tactile Systems, RealSelf.com and Global Care.

Oxford Immunotec pulls in $40M for TB tests — Oxford Immunotec, a U.K. biotech focused on new diagnostic tests for infectious disease, raised $40 million in a third financing round. The company’s release is here (PDF). Investors included Clarus Ventures, Wellington Partners, Kuwait-based National Technology Enterprises Company, the Prelude Trust, Quester and the Dow Chemical Company.

The company’s diagnostic tests identify and measure the activity of immune-system “effector T cells,” whose levels generally correspond to the severity of infection. Oxford Immunotec’s first product is a new diagnostic for tuberculosis designed to replace a century-old skin test. The company says its test has been approved in Europe, Canada and more than 40 other countries. The latest funds will support the U.S. launch of the product.

Zeltiq raises $20.3M for fat reduction — Pleasanton, Calif.-based Zeltiq Aesthetics, a stealthy cosmetic-procedures device maker, raised $20.3 million in a second funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required), citing a regulatory filing. The company was formerly known as Juniper Medical.

Zeltiq is apparently focused on “new technologies for fat layer reduction” that require “little or no recovery time.” The company’s investors include Advanced Technology Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Ventures and family trusts associated with officers of the medical-device incubator The Foundry, including Hank Plain, Hanson Gifford and Mark Deem.

Tactile Systems Tech receives $11.8M for lymphadema treatment — Minneapolis-based Tactile Systems Technology, a maker of computer-controlled pressure garments designed to treat fluid-related swelling known as edema, raised $11.8 million. The private-equity firm Galen Partners led the round.

Cosmetic-procedure review site RealSelf.com takes sub-$1M seed funding — RealSelf.com, a Seattle-based Web site that hosts reviews of various cosmetic procedures, raised a seed round of funding last July and formally launched its service last Friday. The company’s release is here. Investors in the seed round included Zillow CEO Rich Barton, Revenue Science CEO Bill Gossman and Nick Hanauer, a partner at Second Avenue Partners.

For some reason, RealSelf insists on billing itself as a site for discussion of “anti-aging” products, but its focus appears to lie pretty squarely in the realm of what used to be called “plastic surgery” and now is sometimes prettied up with the term “medical aesthetics.” For the record, there is a actual anti-aging movement filled with people obsessing over ways to slow or reverse the hands of time via supplements, hormones and God knows what else. Although many of its practitioners are somewhat nutty, as a movement it has virtually nothing to do with cosmetic procedures such as teeth whitening, laser hair removal and wrinkle fillers, which are topic A at RealSelf.

In an interesting case of cross-item entanglement, though, there seems little doubt that Zeltiq Aesthetics (see two items up) will eventually figure in RealSelf discussions.

Microsoft acquires Thai healthcare IT provider Global Care Solutions — Microsoft, aiming to deepen its hold on healthcare-IT technology, acquired Bangkok-based Global Care Solutions for undisclosed terms. (The release is here.) Global Care’s primary accomplishment seems to have been building a digital patient-management system for Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, which is best known as a center for “medical tourists” seeking care at low prices. The WSJ health blog has a good rundown on the deal.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Specialty pharma Ventaira closes down, Battelle reabsorbs assets (release)
• Nutrigenomics firm WellGen gets $9.5M for anti-obesity ingredient (release)
• Azaya draws $4.1M for reformulated drugs (VW)
• Sequoia Pharma appoints Steven Skolsky as new CEO(release)

Featured companies: Ablynx, Avant Immunotherapeutics, BioForm Medical, Celldex Therapeutics, Genomas, High-Throughput Genomics, Orchid Cellmark, ReliaGene Technologies, SarCode, TransMolecular, VisEn Medical

UPDATED: Expanded items on SarCode, Celldex/Avant and Ablynx.
UPDATE REDUX: Added items on BioForm Medical, High-Throughput Genomics and Orchid Cellmark/ReliaGene.

San Francisco’s SarCode draws down $7M for inflammation drugs — The two-year-old startup drew down $7 million as part of a $25 million first funding round the company arranged last December, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Investors in that round included Alta Partners and Clarus Ventures. The company’s post-investment valuation was $30 million in December.

SarCode is focused on developing new treatments for inflammation using technology it licensed from Sunesis Pharmaceuticals in January. The company can still draw another $13 million from its first round, and anticipates that existing funding will carry it through the end of 2009.

Cosmetic-surgery product maker BioForm sets IPO range, aims for $127M — San Mateo, Calif.-based BioForm Medical, a developer of skin fillers and other cosmetic-procedure products, set its sights on an IPO that could raise up to $126.5 million. BioForm now aims to sell as many as 11.5 million shares at a price of $9 to $11 apiece. Should it come in at the high end of that range, the offering would value the company at almost $500 million.

See our previous coverage of BioForm, which sometimes touts itself as more of a medical-device company than one focused on “medical aesthetics,” in the first item here. The company’s main customers are plastic surgeons and dermatologists.

Celldex goes public with $67M Avant acquisition — Privately held Celldex Therapeutics acquired a majority stake in publicly traded Avant Immunotherapeutics for $66.7 million in stock. The release is here.

The deal effectively takes Celldex public via a form of reverse merger. Although the combined company will be known as Avant, Celldex shareholders will own 58 percent of it. Avant’s current CEO, Una Ryan, will remain in that position in the combined company, which will be worth an estimated $115 million following the merger. The new Avant will pursue a number of immune-related treatments for cancer, infectious disease and autoimmune disease.

High-Throughput Genomics raises $10M for gene-expression tools — Tuscon’s High-Throughput Genomics, a biotech focused on tools that measure gene activity, raised $10 million in a third funding round. Investors included Merck Capital Ventures, Solstice Capital, Valley Ventures and Arcturus Capital.

HTS, founded a decade ago as a subsidiary of a combinatorial-chemistry company called Systems Integration Drug Discovery Company, spun out as an independent company in 2001. The company provides tools that let researchers study the activity of genes and proteins in laboratory samples.

Ablynx aims at €99.2 million IPO for “mini-antibodies” from llama DNA — Belgium’s Ablynx, a biotech focused on developing new therapies using miniature antibody molecules derived from llama DNA, said it hopes to raise as much as €99.2 million ($141.5 million) in an IPO. (Its release is here.)

The offering will be launched on Eurolist by Euronext Brussels. You can find our previous coverage of the company here and here.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• DNA-testing co. Orchid Cellmark acquires ReliaGene Technologies for $8.6M (release)
• VisEn Medical raises $7.5M for imaging (PE Hub)
• Genomas pulls in $2.5M for “DNA-guided medicine” (PE Hub)
• TransMolecular names Nicholas Nicolaides chairman (release)

Featured companies: Cyntellect, Lectus Therapeutics, NeoMatrix, Nexstim, Pearl Therapeutics, Proteon Therapeutics, SupplyScape

(UPDATED at 10am PT: See below.)

Airway-disease specialist Pearl Therapeutics raises $15.5M — Redwood City, Calif.-based Pearl Therapeutics, a drug-formulation company focused on respiratory disease, raised $15.5 million in a first funding round. Investors included New Leaf Ventures, Clarus Ventures and 5AM Ventures.

Pearl doesn’t appear to have a working Web site yet, but according to its release, the company aims to treat unspecified airway diseases using “particle technologies” it has licensed from Nektar Therapeutics. Nektar, of course, is the company that spent years co-developing the inhalable insulin Exubera with Pfizer, only to see it flop in the marketplace — not least because the bulky inhaler resembled nothing so much as a bong.

In fact, Pearl’s ties to Nektar run deep. In addition to licensing its basic technology from Nektar, the company was founded in 2006 by two former Nektar executives, Adrian Smith and Sarvajna Dwivedi. Pearl most likely also aims to reformulate existing drugs into a better inhalable form — and presumably hopes for better luck in doing so.

Proteon Therapeutics sucks in $12M for vascular drug — Proteon, a Waltham, Mass., biotech, raised $12 million in a follow-on to its first funding round. Investors included TVM Capital, Skyline Ventures, Prism VentureWorks and Intersouth Partners.

Proteon’s main drug candidate, PRT-201, aims to do something new by permanently enlarging blood vessels at the site of administration. The technology is based on elastases, a type of protein-cutting enzyme, which supposedly modify the “extracellular matrix” of blood vessels in order to enlarge them. The company expects the drug might be useful for kidney-dialysis patients, who now often have to undergo surgery to create blood vessels large enough for a connection to the blood-filtration devices, and in peripheral arterial disease.

Brain scanner Nexstim beams in €8M — Nexstim , a Helsinki, Finland-based developer of brain-imaging techniques, raised €8 million ($10.9 million) in a private placement. Investors included HealthCap, LSP (Life Sciences Partners), Finnish Industry Investment and Sitra.

Nexstim is working on a new brain-imaging technique it calls “navigated brain stimulation.” The details are pretty hairy — check out the company’s release if you’d like to know more — but it essentially combines several different electromagnetic-imaging techniques with a movable coil that can be guided wherever the operator would like. The system isn’t approved for clinical use, although Nexstim said the funding would allow it to obtain the necessary regulatory approval.

Health software company SupplyScape raises $10M, names new CEO — SupplyScape, a Woburn, Mass., developer of supply-chain software for life-sciences companies, raised $10 million in a third funding round. Investors in the latest round included IDG Ventures Boston, North Bridge Venture Partners, Pilot House Ventures, Bethesda Partners, and Pfizer Strategic Investments Group.

The company also named Mark O’Connell, former CEO of MatrixOne, as its chief executive.

The average person, however, could be forgiven for having no clue what SupplyScape actually does. According to the company’s press releases, it makes software to “maximize product integrity and create business value for pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device companies.” Its Web site promises “collaborative pharmaceutical value chains” that improve “security and profitability.” As it turns out, the company’s software helps track and trace drugs from their point of manufacture through various distribution channels in order to guard against counterfeits, at least so far as I can tell from its Web site.

Cancer screener NeoMatrix raises $9.6M — San Diego’s NeoMatrix, a company focused on early detection of breast cancer, raised $9.6 million in a third funding round. Private investors provided the funding, the company told me. (Its release doesn’t include these details.) Out of sheer coincidence, two southern California businessmen — Anthony Ciabattoni and Richard Franco Sr. — also just joined the company’s board (see the release for details).

Founded in 2000, NeoMatrix sells a screening test that detects pre-malignant or malignant cells in “nipple aspirate fluid,” which is extracted from the breast using a “gentle” suction device. The company said the new funds will allow it to hire its first sales reps, expand its marketing efforts and to convert or retire remaining debt the company used to finance development of its test.

Lectus draws in £3M for MS drugs — Cambridge, England-based Lectus Therapeutics, a biotech focused on a class of drugs known as ion-channel modulators, raised £3 million ($6.1 million) in funding from the Wellcome Trust. The investment is intended specifically to fund development of drugs for multiple sclerosis. Lectus had previously identified its primary disease interests as urinary bladder disorders, pain and angina.

Cell imager Cyntellect adds $3M in funding — Cytellect, a San Diego developer of cell imaging and manipulation systems, raised an additional $3 million in a fourth funding round, bringing the total for the round to $18.1 million. Bru II Venture Capital Fund, based in Reykjavik, Iceland, provided the additional funding.

Cyntellect’s laser-based equipment makes it possible to fluorescently image cells, isolate and destroy unwanted cells in a sample, and to “optoinject” various molecules directly into cells. See our previous coverage here.

UPDATE (10am PT): Added items on Cyntellect, Lectus Therapeutics, NeoMatrix, Nexstim, Pearl Therapeutics, and Proteon Therapeutics.

(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 lie. That seems to present a definitional problem of sorts, because there is only one named venture-capital firm in the deal, Clarus Ventures, which is all of two years old and has a grand total of nine companies in its portfolio. In addition, AIG SunAmerica is a veritable smorgasbord of financial services, none of which seem to include venture capital, and Globus itself says the rest of its funding comes from private equity.

Previous financings at Globus consisted of debt and four angel rounds, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Prior to the latest funding, the company had raised $18 million in equity from angel investors and $25 million in debt from Silicon Valley Bank and Bank of America. The company plans to retire that debt this year.

Globus, which was founded in 2003, said the funds would fund clinical trials of “multiple innovative technologies under development.” The company claims to be one of the world’s ten largest manufacturers of spinal implants, with more than $120 million in “annualized” revenues. According to VentureWire, Globus revenues last year amounted to $82 million, a figure that may grow to $120 million this year.

The company also recently settled six lawsuits with Synthes, agreeing to pay $13.5 million to the Swiss medical-device maker and to refrain from soliciting or hiring Synthes employees for a full year. Synthes had sued Globus, which was founded by former Synthes employees, accusing it of misappropriating trade secrets. There’s more detail at the Philadelphia Business Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

UPDATE: Tom Salemi at the In Vivo blog has more on what the deal means for Globus in the spinal-device market. For what it’s worth, he doesn’t think this funding should be considered a venture-capital deal, either.

Inotek receives $19M for cancer drugs — Beverly, Mass.-based Inotek Pharmaceuticals, a biotech that aims to tackle cancer, heart disease and inflammation, raised $19.3 million in a third funding round. Investors included Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Meditor Capital Management, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Care Capital, La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, MedImmune Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, and Rho Ventures.

Inotek’s lead drug candidate targets an enzyme in the cellular nucleus that helps repair DNA damage. Disabling that enzyme could make it easier to kill tumor cells.

DNA2.0 strikes artificial-DNA co-marketing deal with Operon – DNA2.0, a Menlo Park, Calif., biotech that bills itself as the largest U.S. provider of synthetic genes, struck an agreement with Huntsville, Ala.-based Operon Biotechnologies under which Operon will co-market DNA2.0’s gene-synthesis services. Meanwhile, it also appears that Operaon will share its nucleic-acid synthesis technology with DNA2.0 to improve DNA2.0’s “speed of synthesis.”

This deal probably isn’t all that huge in and of itself, but DNA-synthesis services are likely to grow in prominence as bioengineers become ever-more versed in techniques for modifying natural genes or even creating new genes from scratch. That’s what the emerging field of “synthetic biology” is all about, and it’s definitely worth watching.

PleuraFlow raises almost $1M for drainage device — PleuraFlow, a Bend, Ore., device startup, raised slightly under $1 million in seed financing, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Investors included the angel group BVC Investor, affiliated with the Bend Venture Conference, and the Cleveland Clinic. PleuraFlow is developing a device to improve pleural and pericardial drainage following heart surgery. The company doesn’t have a Web site.

UPDATE (7:05pm PT): Added items on Globus Medical and Inotek.

UPDATE REDUX (6:30am PT Friday): Expanded Globus item.