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TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Luminous Medical raises $24M for automated glucose monitoring (release)
• Alimera Sciences gets $30M for eye-disease drug (release)
• Vaccine maker LigoCyte draws $28M (release)
• Heartbeat tracker CardioNet trims IPO, aims for listing today (IPOhome)
• Axial Biotech takes in $6M for spinal diagnostics (release)
• Insulin bioengineer enGene receives $6.4M (release)
• GlucoLight raises funding for, well, glucose monitoring (release)
• Germany’s InflaRx gets seed funding for sepsis work (release)
• Cell imager Amnis pulls in $3.5M (VentureWire)
• Korea Bone Bank gets funding for bone transplants (release)

Luminous Medical raises $24M for automated glucose monitoring – Carlsbad, Calif.-based Luminous Medical, a medical-device maker, raised $23.5 million in a second funding round. Investors included Adams Street Partners, RiverVest Venture Partners, Finistere Ventures, De Novo Ventures and Latterell Venture Partners.

Luminous is developing an automated blood-sugar sensor for diabetic patients being treated in hospital intensive-care units and operating rooms. According to the company, keeping a tight rein on blood-glucose levels, which can soar or crash unexpectedly in diabetics, helps prevent complications while shortening hospital stays and reducing the risk of death.

Measuring such tight control, however, typically requires manually checking blood-glucose levels every 30 to 60 minutes, the company says. The Luminous device, by contrast, uses infrared spectroscopy — a technique that identifies particular molecules by measuring which wavelengths of light they absorb — to measure glucose and other blood chemicals non-invasively.

The company licensed its technology from InLight Solutions of Albuquerque, N.M., which previously invested $60 million in the technology. The device has not been approved by the FDA.

Axial Biotech takes in $6M for spinal diagnostics – Axial Biotech, a Salt Lake City diagnostic-test maker, raised $6 million as part of its second funding round. Investors included Johnson & Johnson Development, vSpring Capital and Ohio Biotech Group.

Axial, founded in 2002 by a group of spinal surgeons and geneticists, is an odd hybrid of biotech and devices. The company aims to produce tests that will predict and measure the severity of spinal problems such as scoliosis, as well as unspecified “motion-preserving technologies” — presumably an alternative to the stigmatizing back braces that orthopedists have long inflicted on children with the condition.

Insulin bioengineer enGene receives $6.4M – Canada’s enGene, a Vancouver biotech looking for ways to jump-start natural insulin production in diabetics, raised $6.4 million in a first round of funding. Investors included Saad Investments, Masa Life Science Ventures and private investors.

EnGene has an audacious — which is to say, of course, also quite chancy — approach to diabetes, in which the immune system attacks and kills insulin-producing “beta cells” in the pancreas (type 1 diabetes) or the body grows desensitized to insulin and requires higher levels (type 2 diabetes). In either case, patients often require insulin shots to maintain blood-sugar levels necessary or proper metabolism.

EnGene proposes to engineer cells in the small intestine — known as “K cells” — to produce insulin themselves. The advantage of this technique lies in the fact that K cells, like beta cells, respond to sugar levels in the gut, although they normally secrete a separate molecule. Once bioengineered to produce insulin as well, these cells could help regulate blood sugar automatically much the way beta cells normally do.

Of course, gene therapy has, in general, been a great disappointment so far, so there’s no shortage of uncertainty associated with this sort of technique. EnGene has tested its technique in mice, but not yet in humans. The startup plans to seek a second round of funding in the second half.

Alimera Sciences gets $30M for eye-disease drug – Alimera Sciences, an Alpharetta, Ga., drug developer with a focus on eye disease, raised $30 million in a third funding round. The company will now take a majority stake in its drug for diabetic macular edema, a vision-degrading complication of diabetes, which Alimera is developing with its partner pSividia.

We’ve written before about Alimera, which is presumably still contemplating an IPO this fall. All five of the company’s existing VC backers participated in the round: BA Venture Partners, Domain Associates, Intersouth Partners, Polaris Venture Partners and Venrock Associates.

Vaccine maker LigoCyte draws $28M – LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals, a Bozeman, Mont., biotech focused on new vaccines against infectious disease, raised $28 million in a third funding round. Investors included Forward Ventures, JAFCO, Novartis Venture Fund, Fidelity Biosciences, MedImmune Ventures, Athenian Venture Partners and MC Life Sciences Ventures.

The company is developing new vaccines using “virus-like particles” — usually structural viral proteins, minus the replication machinery packed in DNA or RNA — against gastroenteritis, anthrax and flu. It is also working on antibody drugs against inflammatory disease.

InSound Medical, a medical-device startup in Newark, Calif., wants to let people with hearing loss regain that sense without having to wear a conspicuous hearing aid. Instead of clipping around the ear or fitting precariously into the opening of the auditory canal, the company’s Lyric hearing aid is implanted deeper into that canal, where it can remain for up to four months.

The device uses an extended-wear battery and is implanted in a non-surgical procedure in a doctor’s office. Every two to four months, a Lyric device must be extracted and replaced with a new device. InSound sells Lyric on a “subscription” model, in which patients buy a year’s worth of devices at a time. (That’s a company graphic of the device below.)

InSound just raised $11 million in an extension to its fifth round of funding, according to Dan Saccani, the company’s CFO. Investors in the round included De Novo Ventures, J&J Development and CMEA Ventures.

The Lyric was cleared by the FDA in late 2002, although InSound didn’t launch it until last year, Saccani told me. During that time, it underwent a name change — it was originally called the InSound XT — and additional engineering development. The Lyric is currently in limited release in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A five-year delay between approval and product launch is pretty unusual in my experience of the medical-device industry, although I’d be the first to admit I haven’t fully grasped all of its ins and outs. The XT received fast FDA approval because it’s not a surgical device, Saccani said, adding that continuing to develop a product following FDA approval “happens all the time” in the industry.

I’m apparently not the only one a bit baffled by this situation. This 2003 article in Ear, Nose and Throat Journal also describes the San Francisco Bay Area as “the first test market for the InSound XT in 2003.”

InSound doesn’t disclose the Lyric’s price, either — in a FAQ for patients on its Web site, the company replies to the sensible question of cost by blathering on about the revolutionary nature of the device and then suggests that patients “[t]alk with your ENT physician and audiologist to discuss pricing and payment options.” (ENTs are ear, nose and throat doctors.) Saccani explained that because the Lyric is only available on a limited basis, the company is keeping pricing information “close to the vest.”

Point Biomedical, a San Carlos, Calif., developer of new biomedical-imaging products, raised $25 million in a recapitalization, peHub reports. Such recapitalizations often amount to a kind of “reset button” for existing investors and lenders, and usually suggest that a startup has run into some kind of significant — but not insurmountable — obstacle.

Investors in the recap round include new investor Vedanta Opportunities Fund and existing investors William Blair Capital Partners, De Novo Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Saints Capital, Sprout Group and CHL Medical Partners. The recapitalization includes an additional $32.3 million that will become available to Point Bio once it attains an unspecified milestone, which it expects to occur in April.

There’s presumably a release about this, but Point Bio’s Web site has been down all morning, so for now I’m relying on peHub and VentureWire reports. I’ll update if the release turns up. According to VentureWire, Point Bio had previously raised over $110 million from a variety of venture-capital and private-equity firms.

Point Bio is developing a medical imaging and drug-delivery technology based on tiny, nested spheres it calls the BiSphere. This technology is currently in late-stage trials as an “imaging agent” that should make it possible to observe the flow of blood through the heart using ultrasound instead of more invasive methods. We previously covered the company when it raised money last July and described its technology in more detail there.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Surgical-device maker Aragon Surgical receives $25M (release)
• Tacere Therapeutics strikes RNAi deal with Pfizer for up to $145M (release)
• Benvenue Medical raises $15M for spine-repair devices (release)
• Genome-association co. Genizon BioSciences draws C$31M (release)
• Contract research organization Inclinix pulls in $10M (release)
• EPocrates, healthcare IT developer, gets strategic investment from Goldman Sachs (release)
• ZyGem closes first funding round (release)
• Onset Ventures names John Ryan partner (release)
• Retired Scripps immunologist Richard Ulevitch joins 5AM Ventures (release)
• SV Life Sciences promotes Darren Black to partner (release)
• Medical-software maker SafeMed appoints Richard Noffsinger CEO (release)
• Artromick, healthcare IT developer, names Williams Shields CEO (release)
• Stem-cell biotech BioE seeks $3.5M (VentureWire, sub req’d)
• Inovise raises $3.4M for heart diagnostics (VW)
• Fairway Medical pockets $1M for medical devices, aims for $10M (VW)
• Cancer-drug biotech Genspera pulls in $650K, looks for $5M more (VW)
• E-trolZ looks for $400K for electrophysiology devices (VW)

Tacere Therapeutics strikes RNAi deal with Pfizer for up to $145M — San Jose, Calif.-based Tacere Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing new drugs based on the gene-silencing technique known as RNA interference, struck a partnership deal with Pfizer that could be worth up to $145 million. The company’s release is here.

The deal involves Tacere’s leading drug candidate for hepatitis C. Known as TT-033, the drug consists of short stretches of RNA designed to trigger cellular mechanisms that shut down the activity of specific genes — an exciting but so far still unproven approach. In this case, TT-033 aims to shut down three separate parts of the hepatitis C genome, theoretically not only inactivating the virus, but also preventing the development of resistant viral strains.

Tacere is already co-developing TT-033 with Oncolys BioPharma of Japan, and in fact has deep Japanese roots, as the company also received its founding capital from Hokkaido Venture Capital of Sapporo, Japan. (Our coverage of the Oncolys deal is here.) The Pfizer deal appears to be complementary to Tacere’s previous agreement, as the Big Pharma will receive worldwide rights to TT-033 excluding Asian nations. Pfizer will fund all future development of the drug, and will make milestone payments to Tacere as development proceeds. TT-033 has not yet entered human testing.

Surgical-device maker Aragon Surgical receives $25M — Aragon Surgical, a Palo Alto, Calif., developer of surgical instruments, raised $25 million in a second funding round. Investors included Bay City Capital, Integral Capital Partners, Delphi Ventures and Onset Ventures.

Founded in 2005, Aragon develops tools and instruments intended to speed surgical procedures and to improve their safety. The company is working on two major classes of devices — “electrosurgical” instruments, which use electric current to stop bleeding, remove growths and cut tissue, and tools that improve the speed and safety of minimally invasive surgeries known as laparoscopies. Last September, Aragon launched its first product, the LapCap, which guides a needle used to inflate a patient’s abdomen with gas in order to reduce the risk of inaccurate placement and injury.

Benvenue Medical raises $15M for spine-repair devices — Mountain View, Calif.-based Benvenue Medical, a developer of minimally invasive devices for spine surgery, raised $15 million in a second funding round. Investors included Three Arch Partners, Versant Ventures and De Novo Ventures.

Benvenue is developing spinal implants designed for the treatment of spinal compression fractures and degenerative disk disease via spinal fusion. The company’s Web site is a stub, and it doesn’t seem to have described its technology in much detail yet.

Stem-cell biotech BioE seeks $3.5M — St. Paul, Minn.-based BioE, a provider of stem-cell products for the drug and biotech industries, hopes to raise $3.5 million in a first funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The company has so far raised $30 million from angel investors, and disclosed its plans in a regulatory filing. The funds will allow the company to commercialize lines of “multi-lineage” progenitor stem cells and a system for processing and freezing of umbilical-cord blood stem cells.

Inovise raises $3.4M for heart diagnostics — Inovise Medical, a Portland, Ore., developer of cardiac diagnostics, raised $3.4 million in convertible notes, VentureWire reports, citing a regulatory filing. The company is in the midst of fundraising for a sixth financing round. Inovise makes a non-invasive cardiac monitoring system called Audicor that records and analyzes sounds emitted by a beating heart.

Fairway Medical pockets $1M for medical devices, aims for $10M — Fairway Medical Technologies, a Houston incubator that develops a variety of medical devices, raised $1 million from angel investors and is looking to draw another $5 million to $10 million in a first institutional round later this year, VentureWire reports. Founded in 1992, Fairway Medical in-licenses medical devices and ushers them through the development process.

Cancer-drug biotech Genspera pulls in $650K, looks for $5M more — Santa Monica, Calif.-based Genspera, a biotech focused on cancer drugs, raised $650,000 in a seed round and aims to close another $5 million in funding later this quarter, VentureWire reports. The company plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq over-the-counter bulletin board following the financing. Genspera is working on cancer drugs using technology licensed from Johns Hopkins University.

E-trolZ looks for $400K for electrophysiology devices — North Andover, Mass.-based E-trolZ, a developer of electrophysiology measurement devices, raised $400,000 in a follow-on to its first $1.2 million funding round, VentureWire reports. The company is developing components that measure various physiological signals and which can be integrated into other medical devices.

Featured companies: AxoGen, Cognition Therapeutics, Ester Neurosciences, Gene Security Network, HealthTalk, MPM Capital, Revolution Health, SparkPeople

UPDATING: Expanded items on AxoGen, Ester and Cognition. Posted full items on MPM (link) and Gene Security Network (link).

AxoGen raises $12M for nerve regeneration — AxoGen, an Alachua, Fla., biotech focused on developing grafts for damaged “peripheral” nerves, raised $12.1 million in a third funding round. Investors included Accuitive Medical Ventures, Cardinal Partners, De Novo Ventures and Springboard Capital II.

AxoGen develops tissue grafts designed to preserve or restore the function of damaged nerves in the body’s periphery — areas such as the limbs, face or genitals. The company’s technology aims to “cleanse” nerve-graft tissue of substances that might inhibit nerve growth and regeneration — particularly one known as chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan — while preserving other factors that promote regrowth and integration of the grafted nerve.

The company launched its first peripheral-nerve graft product in July. AxoGen says the new funding will allow it to promote the product more vigorously.

Ester Neurosciences acquired by Amarin for $15M — Israel’s Ester Neurosciences, a biotech developing treatments for neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, sold itself to Amarin of the U.K. for an upfront payment of $15 million plus up to $17 million in contingency payments. The release is here.

Ester’s lead program consists of a gene-silencing “antisense” drug for the neurodegenerative condition myasthenia gravis, which is now in a mid-stage test involving 18 patients. The company is also working with Pharmacopeia of the U.S. to develop small-molecule drugs that target variants of the AChE neurotransmitter that appear to be related to behavioral abnormalities or cognitive and motor degeneration.

HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• AxoGen raises $12M for nerve regeneration (release)
• Ester Neurosciences acquired by Amarin for $15M (release)
• Alzheimer’s drug developer Cognition Therapeutics raises $200K (release)
• RevolutionHealth acquires HealthTalk, invests in SparkPeople (release)
• MPM Capital looks for Indian life-science investments (VentureWire, sub req’d)
• Gene Security Network gets $4M for molecular diagnostics (release)

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 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.

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 »

CardioMind, a secretive Sunnyvale, Calif., developer of stents designed to prop open blocked arteries, raised $33 million in a third round of funding, VentureWire reports (subscription required). From the VentureWire story:

CardioMind, with 30 employees, is developing small-diameter drug-eluting stents and delivery devices for cardiovascular and neurological indications and has been largely operating in stealth mode for the past five years.

SV Life Sciences and De Novo Ventures led the round, joined by InterWest Partners, Latterell Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures and Onset Ventures.

CardioMind had previously raised $20 million in two financing rounds, according to VentureWire.

Despite recent concerns over the safety of drug-eluting stents, which are coated with a substance designed to prevent growth of scar tissue that can reblock arteries, new stent companies have continued to get a warm welcome from investors. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Xtent, for instance, raised $76 million in a February IPO. In May, Devax, a Lake Forest, Calif., stent developer, filed to raise up to $85 million in an IPO.

WaveTec Vision Systems of Aliso Viejo, Calif., raised $13 million in a second round of funding, PEHub reports. The company is developing a system to improve patient outcomes in intraocular lens replacement surgeries. The deal was led by Accuitive Medical Ventures and De Novo Ventures, who were joined by existing investor Versant Ventures.

Talima Therapeutics, a Santa Clara, Calif., developer of techniques that limit drug delivery to specific parts of the body, raised $19 million in a second funding round. The company’s release is here.

The company is at work on localized drug-delivery techniques that could serve as alternatives to systemic drugs, potentially improving their effectiveness while limiting side effects. Its initial focus lies in dermatology, a field in which “local application” — that is, ointments, creams and lotions — is already in common practice. Talima hasn’t revealed much about its technology beyond describing it as a “micro-implant” system, which could mean almost anything. The new funding will carry its leading drug candidates — whatever they are — into mid-stage human testing.

The round was led by US Venture Partners and Latterell Venture Partners, joined by current investors De Novo Ventures and Palo Alto Healthcare.

SpectraGenics, a Pleasanton, Calif., developer of laser hair-removal devices for home use, raised at least $20 million in a fourth round of funding, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The round was led by De Novo Ventures and Technology Partners; other investors included Aphelion Capital, Incubic Venture Capital and SDL Ventures.

SpectraGenics, which still seems to be fairly stealthy, sells a version of its hair-removal device in Japan under the name i-epi. If you read Japanese, or just want a look at the device and its marketing, check out their Web site.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Pulmonx raised $20 million in a second-round funding, VentureWire reports (subscription required).

The startup is one of several device makers hoping to pioneer new medical techniques in the field of “interventional pulmonology.” Much like interventional cardiology, in which non-surgeons perform procedures such as angioplasty and stenting to open blocked arteries, interventional pulmonology aims to give lung specialists new tools to treat lung problems such as emphysema in their offices. Patients, of course, could benefit from quicker recovery times and avoiding hospitals as well, at least if the procedures are proven to be equal or superior to existing techniques.

According to VentureWire:

Richard M. Ferrari, managing director of De Novo, said that these companies, like Pulmonx, are looking to replace the current mode of treatment: lung volume reduction surgery. “It’s an incredibly invasive procedure,” he said. “So the concept of having an office-based procedure is irresistible.”

Pulmonx’s technology involves the insertion of a one-way valve, shutting off diseased portions of the lung. Ferrari said that the technique is part of a growing field of interventional pulmonology, which, like the more established field of interventional cardiology, uses catheter-based treatments for diseases.

Pulmonx has been in trials outside of the U.S., Ferrari said, and plans to begin human implantations in the U.S. later this year or early next year. “The $20 million will take them well into their clinical trials,” he said.

The round was led by De Novo Ventures. Others involved in the round include new investor Latterell Venture Partners and existing investors Montreux Equity Partners and MedVenture Associates.