VentureBeat

Featured companies: Formac Pharmaceuticals, Pradama, Protein Sciences, SantoSolve, Scandius BioMedical

UPDATED: Expanded items on Protein Sciences, SantoSolve, Scandius and Pradama.

Vaccine maker Protein Sciences gets $1M — Protein Sciences, a Meriden, Conn., biotech working on a faster way to make flu vaccines, raised $1 million in a convertible-debt offering. Diamyd Medical, a Stockholm-based biotech focused on diabetes, provided the funding.

The funding boosts Diamyd’s total investment in Protein Sciences to $4 million. Conversion of its earlier investment made the Swedish company Protein Sciences’ second-largest shareholder. According to VentureWire (subscription required), Protein Sciences had previously raised $9 million since mid-2004. That doesn’t appear to count the company’s earlier incarnation as MicroGeneSys, a controversial AIDS-vaccine company that successfully lobbied Congress for federal funding to test its product in the early 1990s. (It failed, and the company appears to have largely started anew since then.)

Protein Sciences’ big claim to fame is its work on “recombinant” flu vaccines, which can be genetically engineered quickly instead of grown using whole flu virus in chicken eggs or animal cells. The jury is still out on whether recombinant vaccines really work well, despite periodic waves of hype; my coverage of the last one involving Protein Sciences is here. the U.S. biotech is also manufacturing proteins for Diamyd products such as a therapeutic diabetes vaccine.

Sports-medicine specialist Scandius BioMed acquired by Covidien — Scandius BioMedical, a Littleton, Mass.-based medical-device startup focused on sports injuries, was acquired by Covidien, a publicly traded healthcare-products company in North Haven, Conn. The release is here; the companies didn’t disclose financial terms.

Scandius marketed several products for the reconstruction and healing of ligaments and bones that are often damaged in competitive athletics. According to the company’s Web site, it has raised $13.3 million in equity financing since its founding in 2000, with investors including Commerce Health Ventures, Ivy Healthcare Capital, KBL Healthcare Ventures and Stockton Partners.

Norway’s SantoSolve receives $7M for pain drugs — SantoSolve, an Oslo biotech working on a new class of pain drugs, raised $7 million in a new funding round. Investors included DnBNor, Gezina, Glastad Invest, Teknoinvest and InnovationsKapital.

SantoSolve, founded in 2002, said the funds would allow it to move its leading drug candidate, an arthritis pain drug called 2PX, into late-stage human testing. The company is also testing the drug against neuropathic pain.

Osteoporosis drug maker Pradama raises $1.2M — Louisville, Ky.-based Pradama, a biotech developing an oral drug for osteoporesis, raised $1.2 million in a first funding round, VentureWire reports. Investors included Kentucky Seed Capital Fund, Kentucky Science and Technology Corp., Triathlon Medical Ventures, Commonwealth Seed Capital and Cardinal Venture Fund.

From VentureWire:

Pradama, based in Louisville, Ky., is developing a means of targeting bone-building drugs for osteoporosis to the skeleton. To do this, it links anabolic therapies to a derivative of tetracycline that homes in on bone. One drug it’s considering using with the targeting technology is an estrogen derivative, Pierce said, though other undisclosed therapies are also being studied.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Belgium’s Formac Pharma pulls in €1.7M for new drug-delivery tech (release)
• Osteoporosis drug maker Pradama raises $1.2M (VentureWire, sub req’d)

Featured companies: Biolipox, Inflazyme, Upfront Chromatography, Vertebron00

[NOTE: This is a catchup daily briefing posted on 9/27/07. I've adjusted the posting's timestamp to maintain the chronological order of briefings. --D.P.H.]

Sweden’s Biolipox pays up to $11M for Inflazyme assets — Venture-backed Biolipox, a Swedish biotech focused on inflammatory disease, agreed to pay up to $11 million for the majority of assets controlled by Inflazyme Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded biotech in British Columbia, Canada. Biolipox will pay $4 million up front, with the remaining $7 million contingent on a variety of developmental milestones. With a certain degree of understatement, Inflazyme said it’s possible that it may no longer be publicly listed once the transaction closes.

Biolipox will gain access to two experimental drugs, one for asthma and another with potential for treating memory disorders, as well as a variety of other technologies. The company is considering an IPO, possibly within the next year, Biolipox CEO Torbjorn Bjerke told VentureWire (subscription required).

Upfront Chromatography raises €6.8M for biotech-related purification — Upfront Chromatography, a Danish biotech tools maker focused on purification processes using protein chromatography, pulled in €6.8 million ($9.6 million) in a new funding round. Investors included DSM Venturing, InnovationsKapital and NBGI Ventures.

From the company’s release:

Over the last decade, Upfront has developed a proprietary technology platform, Rhobust™, that purifies biopharmaceuticals and functional proteins directly from complex media. The Company has built a strong reputation as the leading provider of separation services for isolation of high-value functional proteins, from industrial process streams, and is currently developing the world’s largest industrial chromatography installation.

Rhobust technology has also been shown to be particularly suitable for bioprocessing, enabling efficient commercial-scale recovery and purification of monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins and other biomolecules direct from blood plasma or bioreactors. The tremendous potential of Upfront’s single use adsorption systems will contribute to DSM’s downstream processing solutions for monoclonal antibodies and other biopharmaceutical proteins.

Spinal-implant maker Vertebron names Paul Sendro as CEO — Stratford, Conn.-based Vertebron, a maker of spinal impants, named Paul Sendro as its new CEO. Sendro was most recently at Blackstone Medical, another spinal-device company that was acquired last year by Orthofix.