VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Paris-based Stentys takes $18M for “bifurcated” stents (release)
• Blood analyzer IntelliDx raises $22M (PDF release)
• Cancer-test biotech Calderome changes name to VeraCyte (VentureWire)
• Predictive Biosciences names Peter Klemm as CEO (release)

Paris-based Stentys takes $18M for “bifurcated” stents – Stentys, a Paris-based medical device maker, raised $18 million in a second funding round. The company is developing “bifurcated” stents intended to prop open clogged arteries at blood-vessel junctions.

The startup said the funding will allow it to complete clinical trials of its stents and to win European regulatory approval for them. Stentys doesn’t seem to have given any indication whether or when it might seek approval in the U.S. or other markets as well.

Scottish Equity Partners and Sofinnova Partners provided the funding.

Blood analyzer IntelliDx raises $22M –It’s starting to look like Diabetes Week here at VentureBeat LifeScience.

IntelliDx (no Web site), a Boston Santa Clara, Calif., startup with a new type of blood-sugar analyzer for hospitalized diabetics, raised $21.5 million in a fourth funding round (PDF link). Investors included HLM Venture Partners, 3i Ventures, Giza Ventures, Ascend Ventures, Aurum Ventures, Sequel Venture Partners and Hunt BioVentures.

IntelliDx makes a chemical sensor-based blood analyzer for use in hospital intensive-care units. Much like the Luminous Medical spectroscopic blood-glucose analyzer we covered yesterday, the IntelliDx device aims to monitor blood sugar hourly in diabetic patients. The idea, again, is to keep a closer eye on hyperglycemia in a critical-care setting, since runaway blood glucose often increases the chance of complications and lengthier hospital stays.

Cancer-test biotech Calderome changes name to VeraCyte – Calderome, a stealthy cancer-test startup in South San Francisco, has changed its name to VeraCyte (no Web site), VentureWire reports. The new name presumably reflects the company’s focus on cell-based cancer diagnostics, as we described last week.

The VentureWire story goes on to reprise VeraCyte’s $12 million fundraising, which we also covered last week. VeraCyte has two employees, and recently extended job offers to three other individuals, the news service reported.

CORRECTED: The IntelliDx item initially located the company in Boston, not Santa Clara. The company’s release was datelined Boston because it originated with HLM Ventures. Apologies for the error.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Aperio Tech raises $20M for digital pathology (release)
• TissueLink changes name, files for $86M IPO (Edgar)
• Specialty pharma Cydex files to raise $50M in IPO (Edgar)
• Hydra Biosciences takes in $34M for pain drugs (VentureWire)
• AVI BioPharma acquires Ercole Biotech for $9M (release)
• Juvaris Bio names Grant Pickering as CEO (release)
  

Aperio Tech raises $20M for digital pathology – Aperio Technologies, a Vista, Calif., developer of systems for digitizing and analyzing medical images, raised $20 million in a third funding round. With the new investment, Aperio has now raised a total of $53 million, including $11 million it pulled in from existing investors last May.

Investors in the latest round included HLM Venture Partners, Galen Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, Acadia Woods Partners and BlackRock Alternative Advisors. The startup’s tools allow pathologists to scan microscope slides of biopsied tissue or other biomedical samples at high resolution, then view and analyze them for signs of disease.

Over the past six months, Aperio’s tools have received FDA approval for use in manual and automated analysis of tumor-biopsy samples intended to determine whether a patient should receive the breast cancer drug Herceptin.

TissueLink changes name, files for $86M IPO – The medical-device startup formerly known as TissueLink Medical, now renamed Salient Surgical Technologies, filed to raise $86.3 million in an IPO. That makes Salient either the sixth or seventh life-science company to brave the IPO waters this year — a number that’s now maintaining parity with the number of IPOs that have collapsed.

Salient makes surgical tools that use radio-frequency energy to seal up surgical cuts. Although it launched those devices roughly two years ago, the company’s losses have widened since then. Last year, Salient reported a net loss of $14.7 million on sales of $29.5 million.

We previously wrote about TissueLink’s last round of funding.

Featured companies: Adenosine Therapeutics, Allylix, Caprotec BioAnalytics, Equipois, F-Star, Insightec, MedNets.com, Renal Solutions, Transport Pharmaceuticals, VeriCare Management

UPDATED: Expanded items on Transport Pharmaceuticals, InSightec and VeriCare Management.

Transport Pharma aims for $35M for cold-sore treatment — Framingham, Mass.-based Transport Pharmaceuticals, a dermatology-focused biotech developing a new treatment for cold sores, is looking to raise $35 million in a fifth funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Hillman Co., Quaker BioVentures, Carlyle Group and EGS Healthcare Capital Partners have pledged $15 million in the round, which the company expects to close in February.

Transport’s leading product candidate is device that uses a low-voltage electrical current to improve the absorption of drugs through the skin. The handheld device, which the company calls the Solovir electrokinetic transdermal system, delivers a reformulated version of the antiviral drug acyclovir directly to cold sores in a ten-minute treatment. The company has so far raised roughly $36 million in venture funding.

InSightec takes in $30M for ultrasound surgery — Israel’s InSightec, a developer of ultrasound-based surgical systems, raised $30 million in a new funding round. Investors included Elbit Imaging, GE Capital Equity Holdings, MediTech Advisors and directors and managers of the company.

InSightec’s system combines MRI scanning and focused ultrasound in order to attack tumors in a non-invasive fashion. The device has been approved in the U.S. for treatment of uterine fibroids, which are non-cancerous tumors of the female reproductive system. InSightec is currently studying ways to apply the system to brain, liver and bone tumors as well.

VeriCare Management gets $9.5M for mental healthcare services — San Diego’s VeriCare Management, a provider of mental-health care to the elderly, raised $9.5 million (MS Word document) in a second funding round. Investors included HLM Venture Partners, Salix Ventures, Acacia Venture Partners and Aetna Ventures.

This is sort of an interesting investment, as VCs haven’t traditionally been all that interested in healthcare providers. In the release, Aetna managing director Adam Grossman notes that the investment is aimed specifically at improving the quality of healthcare, which suggests that some VCs, at least, are starting to view quality improvements as financially rewarding. The logic isn’t entirely clear to me, but it seems to parallel the effort that David Brailer’s new outfit, Health Evolution Partners, is just getting off the ground. (See our coverage of Health Evolution here.)

HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Adenosine Thera gets $4.5M for a grab-bag of drugs (release)
• Caprotec BioAnalytics raises $6.6M for protein-analysis tools (GenomeWeb News)
• Ergonomic-arm maker Equipois raises $1.5M (VW)
• F-Star adds $4.5M for engineered antibodies (release)
• Healthnostics acquires med-info portal MedNets.com (release)
• Flavor and fragrance producer Allylix raises $3.4M (release)
• Renal Solutions acquired by Fresenius Medical for $190M (release)

Featured companies: Bioptigen, Echo Therapeutics, Forest Laboratories, Intrinsic Therapeutics, Microbia, Phreesia, Sontra Medical, TransMedics, Xanthus Pharmaceuticals

[NOTE: This is a catchup briefing, posted on 9/28/07. I've adjusted the item's timestamp to keep the briefings in chronological order. --D.P.H.]

Patient-info digitizer Phreesia takes in $10.3M — Phreesia, a New York company that claims to offer a “100% free” — but ad-sponsored — digital patient check-in application to doctors, raised $10.3 million in a second funding round. Investors included Polaris Ventures Partners, HLM Venture Partners, Long River Ventures and Village Ventures.

Phreesia offers doctors wireless touch-screen pads and related software designed to replace the traditional check-in clipboard in doctors’ offices. Among other claimed benefits, the technology is designed to provide legible patient information and to conduct patient interviews — along the lines of those endless rows of checkboxes that ask you to recall your own medical history and sometimes that of your immediate family as well. The catch is that the devices will then beam sponsored “educational” content at patients, although Phreesia claims doctors can first review it and that patients can skip it if they want. (Any guesses on how easy people will find to do that?)

I hope to return to Phreesia before much longer — among other things, they plan to present at Demo this year. (UPDATE: They’ve done so, and apparently were named one of the best presentations at the conference.) And there are certainly plenty of cool things about this idea, not least the fact that returning patients can merely confirm their information instead of filling it all out again. Still, the service raises lots of questions, not least among them the consequences of letting “sponsors” — read: “drug companies” — have direct access to patients in waiting rooms. Anyway, this looks interesting enough that I’ll definitely take a closer look.

Xanthus aims for $30M to support leukemia treatment — Cambridge, Mass.-based Xanthus Pharmaceuticals, a biotech with a small-molecule drug against acute myeloid leukemia, intends to raise $30 million in a third funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The company would aim to complete the funding by late this year or early next.

The leukemia drug, which the company calls Xanafide, has completed mid-stage human tests (PDF) that Xanthus claimed “associated” the drug with complete remissions. The trial wasn’t blinded or randomized, which in short means it’s almost impossible to draw such sweeping conclusions from it. Xanafide isn’t a particularly exotic drug, either; as a topoisomerase II inhibitor, it shares the same basic mechanism of action as many traditional chemotherapy drugs. Still, this is why companies carry out blinded, randomized late-stage trials, which Xanthus says it intends to begin with Xanafide before long.

Spinal-device maker Intrinsic raises $21M — Intrinsic Therapeutics, a Woburn, Mass., device maker focused on minimally invasive spinal-disc repair, raised $21 million in a fourth funding round, VentureWire reports. Investors included New Enterprise Associates, Spray Venture Partners, Sprout Group and an unidentified institution.

The company’s been close-mouthed about its progress, although VentureWire reports that it recently began selling its disc devices in Europe. The financing is intended to fund future clinical trials and the costs of applying for FDA approval.

Live liver transplanter TransMedics files for $86.3M IPO — In case you’re not a Monty Python, that headline is a joke — although not by much. TransMedics, an Andover, Mass., medical-device company, aims to develop a box that can keep living, transplanted organs alive. They’ve filed to raise $86.3 million in an IPO. This is another fascinating-sounding company I’ll have to come back to once I’ve caught up on these briefings, but in the meantime feel free to check out their S-1 and their Web site. Also, I should note that TransMedics is actually focused on heart transplants, not liver.

Eye imager Bioptigen gets $500K infusion — Durham, N.C.-based Bioptigen received a $500,000 convertible financing as it prepares for a second funding round. Investors included the Piedmont Angel Network Two and other existing investors. Bioptigen is developing a real-time imaging system for ophthalmic indications.

Microbia strikes deal worth up to $330M for GI disorders — Microbia, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech with a focus on gastrointestinal and heart disease, struck a partnership with New York’s Forest Laboratories worth up to $330 million to develop its first GI drug. Microbia gets a $70 million upfront payment and milestone and licensing payments worth much more if the development is successful. Microbia has already raised $231 million in venture equity. See the company’s release here (PDF).

(UPDATED at 5:05 p.m. PDT; see below.)
(As part of my ongoing effort to strike the right balance between keeping up with venture-business news and writing more analysis, I’m inaugurating a daily briefing that will collect deal-related news items from the life sciences in one place. I’ll continue updating this post throughout the day as the news dictates. Comments on this or any other feature of this blog are always welcome; sound off below. For more on recent and possible future changes to the Life Sciences site, see earlier posts here and here.)

Featured companies: CoolSystems, BioProcessors, ConforMIS, Semafore Pharmaceuticals, Vatera Capital, Danish Diagnostic Development, BG Medicine

CoolSystems raises $3M for sports medicine — CoolSystems, a Berkeley, Calif., medical-device maker focused on sports medicine and post-surgical treatments for orthopedic injuries, raised $3 million in an expected $6 million seventh funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The inside round includes MedVenture Associates, Maxwell Trust, Roda Group and angel and individual investors. Completing the $6 million round will bring the company’s total fundraising to $28.9 million.

Founded in 1998, CoolSystems makes and sells compression and cooling wraps under the GameReady brand. From the VentureWire story:

The company’s device treatments include a technology that provides a simultaneous compression and cold therapy, as well as wraps, for the treatment of post-orthopedic surgery and sports medicine. The technology works when a cloth is wrapped around the treatment area and is squeezed on the outside like a blood pressure cuff with a cyclical compression to reduce swelling, while high speed cooling is applied on the inside. The company also worked on the wraps with doctors and dress designers to get the best fit. CoolSystem’s equine division sells products for competitive and post-operative horses.

Implant maker ConforMIS secures $10M debt facility – Lexington, Mass.-based ConforMIS, a maker of knee implants for arthritis patients, secured a $10 million “debt facility” with Merrill Lynch Capital. The funding will help accelerate commercialization of the company’s patient-specific knee implants while serving as a bridge to a mezzanine round.

Microbioreactor maker BioProcessors raises $10M — BioProcessors, a Woburn, Mass., developer of drug-development laboratory equipment, raised an additional $10 million in a third funding round, bringing its total for the round to $28 million, VentureWire reports.

Investors included LSP Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, New Science Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners and Healthcare Ventures. According to PE Hub, the company has a post-money valuation of approximately $68 million. BioProcessors, founded in 2000, makes miniature “bioreactors” for culturing cells or conducting automated cell-based experiments.

Semafore Pharma names new CEO – Semafore Pharmaceuticals, an Indianapolis biotech focused on cancer drugs, named Edward Jacobs as its new CEO. Jacobs was previously the chief operating officer at SuperGen.

Kos Pharma founder starts new VC fund — Michael Jaharis, a co-founder of Kos Pharmaceuticals, which Abbott Labs snapped up for $4.2 billion last December, has launched his own VC fund, Vatera Capital, VentureWire reports. The fund has already participated in one funding, a $53 million round for Aveo Pharmaceuticals (see our coverage here). Given Jaharis’ background running drug-reformulation companies — that is, ones focused on figuring out how to package old drugs in new ways — it seems likely that his investments will follow suit. (Aveo, which licensed its cancer drugs from Mitsubishi Pharma, is a pretty good example, in fact.) This strategy can certainly make money — Kos itself is a prime example of that — but it probably isn’t going to knock anyone’s socks off.

Israel’s manufacturing-quality inspector Orbotech pays $39M to acquire Danish Diagnostic Development — Orbotech, an Israel-based maker of electronic-component inspection systems, agreed to buy Danish Diagnostic Development for $39 million in cash, plus up to another $6.5 million in milestone payments. (See the release here.)

DDD is a leading maker of “gamma cameras” used in CT and MRI scans as well as in “nuclear medicine,” which involves injecting a radioactive solution into a patient, then observing their movements with the gamma camera. Orbotech said the acquisition heralds its diversification into medical imaging.

BG Medicine files for European IPO — Waltham, Mass.-based BG Medicine notified the SEC that it intends to go public on the Euronext Amsterdam market. BG Medicine is focused on developing new “molecular diagnostics” that aimed at detecting disease or other bodily harm at the earliest possible moment. The company’s lead candidates include tests for early signs of heart failure or clogged arteries and another test to determine if patients are likely to respond to new cancer drugs such as Herceptin and Avastin.

UPDATE (5:05pm PT): Added items on Semafore Pharmaceuticals, Vatera Capital, Danish Diagnostic Development and BG Medicine.

Satiety, a Palo Alto, Calif., device maker focused on obesity, raised $30 million in a fourth round of funding. Skyline Ventures led the round, joined by HLM Venture Partners, Pinnacle Ventures, Venrock, Three Arch Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures and Thomas Fogarty.

Satiety is developing a minimally invasive device for stomach-reduction surgery consisting of a stapling tool that can be passed down the throat into the stomach. The company was founded in 2001.