VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M (VentureWire)
• TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices (peHUB)
• Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M (release)
• Population Genetics takes in £3.8M for massively parallel genome studies (GenomeWeb)
• “Brain fitness” trainer Dakim raises $11M (release)
• BioIQ, home-diagnostics maker, takes in $2.5M (release)
• Hospital med-tracker Sabal Medical raises funds (release)
• Seattle’s PharmaIN gets $400K NIH grant for nanoparticle staph drug (PDF release)
• SensiGen, molecular-diagnostics developer, receives Michigan state loan (release)
• Arcus Ventures aims for $50M fund, targets cancer (VentureWire)

Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M – Zonare Medical Systems, a Mountain View, Calif., maker of ultrasound-imaging systems, raised $30 million in a recent seventh funding round, VentureWire reports. Existing investors provided the funding, a group that includes Frazier Healthcare Ventures, 3i Group, Mosaix Ventures, CB Health Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvestson, Ascension Health Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Earlybird, Saints Capital, Merrill Lynch Venture Capital and Texas Instruments.

The company said the funding should set it on the road to profitability and eventually to a hope-for IPO. Zonare makes compact ultrasound systems that can be used in sonography and for a variety of other medical diagnostic purposes.

TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices – TherOx, an Irvine, Calif., maker of oxygenation devices for treating heart attacks, raised $30 million in a tenth funding round, peHUB reports. Investors included Kleiner Perkins, Integral Capital Partners and New Science Ventures.

The startup makes devices that supersaturate blood with oxygen, then infuse that blood into areas of the heart at risk of damage from oxygen starvation due to a heart attack. TherOx has now raised over $120 million in venture funding.

Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M – San Diego’s Accumetrics, a maker of diagnostics that measure patient response to anti-platelet drugs, raised $28.8 million in a fourth round of funding. Investors included Arnerich Massena & Associates, BBT Fund, Essex Woodland Health Ventures, RiverVest, PTV Sciences, KB Partners and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.

The startup makes a system that measures how well individuals are reacting to treatment with anti-platelet drugs, which are used to prevent or help dislodge major blood clots. Since patient response can vary widely, often as a result of genetic factors (see our coverage of this sort of “personalized medicine” here), such monitoring can help doctors avoid dangerous overdoses or to switch unresponsive patients to higher doses or different drugs as necessary.

Population Genetics Technologies takes in £3.8M for massively parallel genome studies – Population Genetics Technologies, a U.K. startup devoted to technologies for studying thousands of genomes at once, raised £3.8 million ($5.9 million) in a first funding round, GenomeWeb reported. Investors included Auriga Partners, Noble Fund Managers, and Compass Genetics Investors.

The company raised £1.1 million in seed funding from the Wellcome Trust back in 2005 to aid in the development of the technology. PGT is working on a technique devised by Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner that purports to analyze genetic variation in DNA samples from thousands of individuals at once.

In this 2005 release, PGT co-founder Sam Eletr described the method as “will allow the mixing of thousands of samples in one test tube and the simultaneous interrogation [analysis] of all of them in one experiment, instead of in as many experiments as there are genomes in a population…. We expect our technology to allow handling much larger numbers of genomes than pooling does and to have the further advantage of protecting the identities of individuals involved in any population study by allocating them a code that may be kept confidential. We expect it also be applicable to any collection of DNA molecules and genomes, whether from plants, animals, micro-organisms or humans.”

PGT also named Mel Kronick, a former R&D manager at both Agilent Technologies and Applied Biosystems, as CEO.

Featured companies: Apex Radiology, Arcxis Biotechnologies, EKR Therapeutics, Franklin & Seidelmann, Michelson Diagnostics, SensiGen, Vascular Closure Systems

UPDATED: Expanded items on Arcxis, Vascular Closure and Archemix.

Arcxis pulls in $2M for DNA tools — Arcxis Biotechnologies, a Pleasanton, Calif., biotech tool maker focused on analysis of DNA and proteins in biological samples, raised $2 million in a follow-on to its first funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Investors included Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Claremont Creek Ventures.

Arcxis released its first product, a kit for anthrax detection, earlier this year. The company is in the process of raising a second round, which it hopes to complete by February. Arcxis previously raised $2.3 million from Claremont Creek in 2006.

Vascular Closure raises seed funding to close femoral-artery punctures — Palo Alto, Calif.-based Vascular Closure Systems, a medical-device maker focused on ways to close up the surgical punctures caused by minimally invasive heart procedures, raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding. The company didn’t disclose its investors.

Vascular’s technology, which the company doesn’t describe in detail, aims to make blood-vessel punctures more cost effective as well as easier for surgeons to learn and use. The device apparently comes in bioabsorbable, removable, and permanent-sealing designs. Such punctures are often used in heart procedures such as inserting stents to prop open blocked vessels; those devices are frequently put in place using a catheter that is threaded up through the femoral artery.

Aptamer-drug maker Archemix sets IPO range, aims for $72.5M take — Cambridge, Mass.-based Archemix, a developer of drugs based on nucleic-acid fragments called aptamers, raised its IPO sites and now plans to raise as much as $72.5 million. Archemix had previously outlined a $69 million IPO in July; our coverage is here.

The company now plans to offer up to 5.2 million shares at $12 to $14 apiece. The offering could value Archemix at as much as $261.2 million, which PE Hub notes is “virtually identical” to the company’s valuation at the end of its last VC round.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• Michelson Diagnostics gets £600K for tumor imaging (VentureWire)
• Franklin & Seidelmann acquires Apex Radiology, expands into full-service teleradiology(release)
• Specialty pharma EKR Therapeutics arranged debt facility (release)
• SensiGen draws $300K for molecular diagnostics (release)

Giant players such as Google and Microsoft already provide health care-focused search sites, but they aren’t that impressive.

San Francisco’s Healthline, however, is focusing solely on health search, and is making surprising headway. It has six million monthly unique users, and is the only search engine among the top-twenty U.S. health-related sites — with the exception of Yahoo Health (see list below). And with healthcare a very important part of the economy, there’s a land-grab going on, and investors want a part of it. Healthline today announced it has raised $21 million more in financing, led by GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund.

Its success apparently derives from giving users more options, such as links to trusted article sources related to the symptoms they experience, along with lists of possible causes, tips and advice.

West Shell, chief executive, told us that’s why sites such as AOL and others are booting Google’s health related search, which provides a simple list of results but no other context, in favor of Healthline. Over the past two months, it has signed numerous other syndication deals, and now powers search at sites like NBC Universal’s iVillage Total Health, Eons and Health Central Network.

There several players in this area, most notably Kosmix, Microsoft’s Medstory (see our coverage), and Google’s health-only search site. A host of others are trying to build communities around health issues, but don’t focus purely on search per se. Healthcare.com, with $6 million in fresh cash, recently joined the crowd.

Healthline’s financing comes from GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between GE Commercial Finance’s Media, Communications & Entertainment business and NBC Universal, and includes strategic financing from Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and previous investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures.

The company has now raised a total of $59 million. The site launched in 1999, but then went through a major reorganization to focus on search in 2005.