VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Antibody-discovery startup Adimab raises new funding (release)
• Lung-device maker Spiration gets $19M (release)
• Sample-prep startup Protein Discovery pulls in $10M (release)
• Inogen takes in $13M for portable oxygen device (VentureWire)
• Healthcare IT concern Medaptus raises $11M for expansion (VentureWire)
• Contract lab Synexis raises $14M (peHUB)
• Medical-device VC firm BioStar Ventures takes in $24M of $80M fund (peHUB)
• Halsa Pharma gets $250K for “natural” obesity-control treatment (release)
• Diagnostics provider Lab21 acquires NPTech (peHUB)
• Galil Medical names Martin Emerson CEO (release)

Antibody-discovery startup Adimab raises new funding – Lebanon, N.H.-based Adimab, a biotech working on new ways to discover antibody drugs, has raised a second round of funding. The company didn’t disclose the size of the round.

Adimab, which raised $6 million last July, is one of several startups looking to design new antibody drugs in bioengineered yeast cells, as we wrote at the time. (Alder Biopharmaceuticals, which raised $40 million in January, is another.) The technique promises to be much faster — and freer of patent restrictions — than current methods. When Adimab completes its current manufacturing facility in the second quarter, it claims it will be able to produce a panel of human antibodies against a particular target in just 90 days, instead of the year or more traditional methods can require.

Investors included Polaris Venture Partners and SV Life Sciences, who also invested in the company’s first round.

Lung-device maker Spiration gets $19M – Spiration, a Redmond, Wash., medical-device startup, raised $18.5 million in a seventh funding round. Investors included Versant Ventures, Olympus Medical Systems, New Enterprise Associates, New Leaf Venture Partners, InterWest Partners, Investor Growth Capital and Three Arch Partners.

Spiration has now raised a total of $97 million. It is developing a set of one-way valves for emphysema that can be implanted in the lung’s airways via a minimally invasive procedure. These valves are designed to shunt air away from diseased portions of the lung and redirect it to healthier areas. The company said the funding would support commercialization of its device in Europe and to complete studies for regulatory approval in the U.S.

Other startups working on similar technology include Emphasys Medical, Pulmonx and Broncus Technologies.

Sample-prep startup Protein Discovery pulls in $10M – Knoxville, Tenn.-based Protein Discovery, a biotech with new laboratory technology for protein identification, raised $10 million in a third funding round. Investors included Santé Ventures, Memphis Biomed Ventures, the Southern Appalachian Fund, and the Nashville Capital Network.

The startup is developing technology that aims to “simplify” the process of preparing biological samples for protein analysis. The details are probably too much for anyone who’s not a lab technician themselves, but feel free to check out the company’s explanation if you dare.)

Inogen takes in $13M for portable oxygen device – Inogen, a Goleta, Calif., medical-device maker, raised $12.6 million in its fifth funding round, VentureWire reports. Investors included Accuitive Medical Ventures, Arboretum Ventures, Avalon Ventures, Novo A/S, Numenor Ventures and Versant Ventures.

The company makes and sells portable oxygen-delivery systems for patients suffering from a lung problem called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The product has been on the market for several years, and Inogen says it believes it might take several more before it’s in a position to be acquired or to go public.

(UPDATED: See below.)

Ceregene, a San Diego biotech at work on a gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, has so far raised $28 million in a third funding round and last week struck a development partnership with Genzyme that resulted in a $25 million up-front payment and potential payments of another $125 million plus royalties.

Those are some surprisingly large numbers for gene therapy, the experimental practice of inserting new genes into the human body in hopes that their activity will make up for a defective or malfunctioning natural gene. The technique once served as a poster child for biotechnology’s promise of curing genetic disease, but crashed and burned when early efforts failed or, in a few tragic cases, proved harmful to patients. One infamous trial involving a rare genetic disease led to the 1999 death of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger, after which interest in the field dropped precipitously.

Now enthusiasm for gene therapy may once again — tentatively, at least — be on the upswing. Ceregene’s focus lies in genes that can deliver so-called neurotrophic factors, which are naturally occuring proteins that protect brain, spinal and nerve cells against damage, prevent programmed cell death, and stimulate the growth of new neurons.

While researchers have long considered neurotrophic factors a possible way to treat degenerative neural diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, the proteins themselves don’t make promising drugs — largely because they’re too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. Some researchers have experimented with delivering similar proteins directly into the brain via invasive shunts or catheters, but the results have been unimpressive and the cost and difficulty of the procedure would likely limit its widespread use in any case.

Ceregene’s technology involves adeno-associated viruses that have been modified to carry genes for particular neurotrophic factors and disabled from reproducing naturally. These viruses are designed to carry the genes into at-risk cells — say, dopamine-producing neurons in Parkinson’s patients — and then “install” the carried gene into cellular DNA, where the cell’s own natural machinery will activate the gene and begin to produce neurotrophic factors.

In an early-stage trial involving just 12 Parkinson’s patients, administration of Ceregene’s gene therapy CERE-120 was associated with a 36 percent reduction in symptoms 12 months after the gene-loaded virus was injected into the volunteers’ brains. That trial didn’t have the most rigorous controls necessary to protect against investigator bias and placebo effect, so it’s impossible to draw too many conclusions from it. Ceregene is currently at work on a 51-patient follow-up trial that may produce data by the fall of 2008.

The promising results still intrigued Genzyme, an early pioneer in gene therapy for cystic fibrosis, who two years earlier had bought out much of the gene-therapy business of the struggling biotech Avigen, which also has a gene-therapy treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Last week, Genzyme agreed to pay Ceregene 50 percent of the late-stage development costs for CERE-120 plus up to $150 million in cash in exchange for all rights to the treatment outside the U.S. and Canada. That’s a fairly hefty sum for a treatment that hasn’t even completed mid-stage trials and which also depends on such a relatively untested technique as gene therapy. Genzyme has other irons in the gene-therapy fire as well; today, Applied Genetic Technologies announced that it received $2 million from the big biotech as a milestone payment for its development of a gene therapy for a particular form of blindness.

Meanwhile, Ceregene has also raised $28.1 million in an open third funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Investors in the round include Investor Growth Capital, Alta Partners, California Technology Ventures, Hamilton BioVentures, MPM Capital and Cell Genesys, Ceregene’s former corporate parent.

UPDATE: Added MPM Capital to the investors list, per Ceregene CEO Jeff Ostrove’s comment.

Biolex Therapeutics, a Pittsboro, N.C., developer of technology for improving the properties of monoclonal antibodies, raised $30 million in a third funding round.

Biolex specializes in producing proteins that are difficult to make with existing bioengineering processes and in optimizing the biological properties of monoclonal antibodies. It is also pursuing its own experimental drug candidates, and said the proceeds of this round will serve primarily to advance Locteron, an experimental time-release form of interferon alfa, into late-stage human tests against hepatitis C.

Investor Growth Capital led the round, joined by two other new investors, JP Morgan Securities and Easton Capital. Existing shareholders including Quaker BioVentures, Polaris Venture Partners, Intersouth Partners, Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation and Dow Venture Capital also participated. The company’s release is here (PDF).