VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Acorn Cardio raises $22M for heart-failure device (bizjournals.com)
• Agile Therapeutics raises $5.6M for women’s health (release)
• Polyheal draws $1M for wound healing (Globes)
• MatrixBio receives seed funding for cancer diagnostics (release)
• Pacira Pharma names David Stack as CEO (release)
• VivoMetrics appoints Howard Baker as CEO (release)

Acorn Cardio raises $22M for heart-failure device – St. Paul, Minn.-based Acorn Cardiovascular, a device maker investigating a device that would restrain the expansion of failing hearts, raised $22 million in a new funding round. Investors included Cardinal Partners, Thoratec, SightLine Partners, Credit Suisse and New Enterprise Associates.

Acorn’s device, which it calls the CorCap, is a polyethylene mesh wrap that wraps around the heart, theoretically slowing or stopping the expansion that often occurs as hearts weaken and tire. The company sells the CorCap in Europe, but last year an FDA advisory panel recommended against approval of the device, throwing Acorn’s future into doubt until it reached an agreement with the FDA to conduct a new 50-patient trial. We previously covered Acorn’s travails and its primary venture competitor, the Sunnyvale, Calif., startup Paracor Medical, in this post.

Agile Therapeutics raises $5.6M for women’s health – Agile Therapeutics, a Princeton, N.J., specialty pharma focused on new contraceptives for women, raised $5.6 million in an extension of its fifth funding round, bringing the total for that round to $17.6 million. Investors in the round include the Hillman Company, ProQuest Investments, TL Ventures and Novitas Capital.

Agile’s lead product candidate is a low-dose estrogen patch for contraception, which is currently in mid-stage human trials. Agile suggests that the seven-day patch, which delivers steady doses of levonorgestrel and ethinyl estradiol, may help alleviate some side effects associated with high hormone exposure, such as breast tenderness, bloating or weight gain, and nausea.