VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• IlluminOss Medical gets $11M for bone-fracture devices (peHUB)
• Contract researcher Crown Bioscience takes in funding (release)

IlluminOss Medical gets $11M for bone-fracture devices — East Providence, R.I.-based IlluminOss Medical, a medical-device startup, raised $11 million in a second funding round, peHUB reports. Backers included New Leaf Ventures and Foundation Medical Partners.

The company’s Web site is barely more than a stub that describes IlluminOss as a device company “pioneering new frontiers in orthopedic surgery.” peHUB offers the further tidbit that the company is developing a minimally invasive system for treating bone fractures.

We’ve previously covered Sonoma Orthopedics Products, a California firm with what may be a similar technology for treating fractures with an implant that supposedly speeds healing from inside the bone.

Contract researcher Crown Bioscience takes in funding – Crown Bioscience, a biology-services startup in Santa Clara, Calif., raised an undisclosed sum in a second funding round. Chemizon, a division of Optomagic, provided the cash.

Crown offers a variety of biology-based services, including protein characterization, drug-candidate discovery and assessment of anticancer drugs. In other words, it’s a contract-research organization, although it seems to have a wider range of offerings that many CROs do.

Featured companies: Aveo Pharmaceuticals, Aviir, deltaDot, Origen Therapeutics

Heart-diagnostic maker Aviir raises $11.3M — Palo Alto, Calif.-based Aviir, a biotech developing cardiovascular diagnostics based on Stanford research, raised $11.3 million of an expected $25 million second funding round, PE Hub reports. The news is presumably from one of those paper-based SEC filings that are supposed to be digitized before long.

Investors include Bay City Capital, Aberdare Ventures and New Leaf Ventures. Aviir hasn’t said much about its technology beyond the fact that its tests are designed to provide “accurate diagnosis and prognosis” of heart disease and that it expects to reach the market next year. That’s ridiculously fast for anything that needs to move through clinical trials, so chances are good that Aviir is aiming for some sort of “home-brew” strategy in which it will conduct the tests itself instead of selling kits and reagents to clinical laboratories around the country. Home-brew tests are regulated less strictly by the FDA.

DeltaDot, biological tool maker, raises £3M — The London maker of tools for identifying and separating biomolecules drew in £3 million ($6.1 million) (PDF link) from investors in a fourth funding round, bringing the total raised in that round to £6 million. Investors included FF&P Private Equity, Imperial Innovations, NPI Ventures, Sitka Health Fund VCT and London Technology Fund.

DeltaDot, which spun out of the Imperial College of Science, Medicine and Technology, uses technologies from high-energy physics to measure the ultraviolet-light absorption of molecules and then applies signal-processing algorithms to identify them.

Aveo Pharma raises $5M in broader deal with OSI Pharma — Cambridge, Mass.-based Aveo Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing targeted cancer drugs, raised $5 million in equity and received another $10 million in cash as part of a broader development partnership with publicly traded OSI Pharmaceuticals. The deal will also include payments for future milestones and royalties, if any, although the companies didn’t estimate their potential value.

The alliance is aimed at developing drugs that target a cellular process known as “epithelial-mesenchymal transition,” a natural stage of cellular development mimicked by tumor cells as they spread, or metastasize, throughout the body. See our previous coverage of Aveo here.

Origen receives $2M grant for chicken-based antibodies — Burlingame, Calif.-based Origen Therapeutics, a company focused on developing biotech products from genetically engineered chickens, received a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding is intended to spur development of human polyclonal antibodies — which attack a variety of different protein targets instead of a single one, the way monoclonal antibodies do — that can be produced by chickens and deposited in eggs for harvesting. The first goal of the program will be to develop therapies for antibiotic-resistant hospital infections, which represent a growing threat to patients.

From the Origen press release:

Most antibody therapeutics today, such as the cancer treatments Avastin® and Herceptin® and the anti-infective Synagis®, are monoclonal antibodies that attack a single antigen target on a cell or viral surface. In contrast, when the human immune system produces antibodies against disease, it makes polyclonal antibodies capable of recognizing and attacking different antigens on the same cell, enabling that disease target to be simultaneously attacked at many different points. Thus the ability to produce fully human polyclonal antibodies on a commercial scale for use as therapeutics could take antibody-based therapies to a new level of efficacy by more closely mimicking the full potential of the natural human immune response. Until now, the production of safe and effective polyclonal antibody treatments has been hampered by the lack of an appropriate system for the development and production of such antibodies.

Featured companies: Cyntellect, Lectus Therapeutics, NeoMatrix, Nexstim, Pearl Therapeutics, Proteon Therapeutics, SupplyScape

(UPDATED at 10am PT: See below.)

Airway-disease specialist Pearl Therapeutics raises $15.5M — Redwood City, Calif.-based Pearl Therapeutics, a drug-formulation company focused on respiratory disease, raised $15.5 million in a first funding round. Investors included New Leaf Ventures, Clarus Ventures and 5AM Ventures.

Pearl doesn’t appear to have a working Web site yet, but according to its release, the company aims to treat unspecified airway diseases using “particle technologies” it has licensed from Nektar Therapeutics. Nektar, of course, is the company that spent years co-developing the inhalable insulin Exubera with Pfizer, only to see it flop in the marketplace — not least because the bulky inhaler resembled nothing so much as a bong.

In fact, Pearl’s ties to Nektar run deep. In addition to licensing its basic technology from Nektar, the company was founded in 2006 by two former Nektar executives, Adrian Smith and Sarvajna Dwivedi. Pearl most likely also aims to reformulate existing drugs into a better inhalable form — and presumably hopes for better luck in doing so.

Proteon Therapeutics sucks in $12M for vascular drug — Proteon, a Waltham, Mass., biotech, raised $12 million in a follow-on to its first funding round. Investors included TVM Capital, Skyline Ventures, Prism VentureWorks and Intersouth Partners.

Proteon’s main drug candidate, PRT-201, aims to do something new by permanently enlarging blood vessels at the site of administration. The technology is based on elastases, a type of protein-cutting enzyme, which supposedly modify the “extracellular matrix” of blood vessels in order to enlarge them. The company expects the drug might be useful for kidney-dialysis patients, who now often have to undergo surgery to create blood vessels large enough for a connection to the blood-filtration devices, and in peripheral arterial disease.

Brain scanner Nexstim beams in €8M — Nexstim , a Helsinki, Finland-based developer of brain-imaging techniques, raised €8 million ($10.9 million) in a private placement. Investors included HealthCap, LSP (Life Sciences Partners), Finnish Industry Investment and Sitra.

Nexstim is working on a new brain-imaging technique it calls “navigated brain stimulation.” The details are pretty hairy — check out the company’s release if you’d like to know more — but it essentially combines several different electromagnetic-imaging techniques with a movable coil that can be guided wherever the operator would like. The system isn’t approved for clinical use, although Nexstim said the funding would allow it to obtain the necessary regulatory approval.

Health software company SupplyScape raises $10M, names new CEO — SupplyScape, a Woburn, Mass., developer of supply-chain software for life-sciences companies, raised $10 million in a third funding round. Investors in the latest round included IDG Ventures Boston, North Bridge Venture Partners, Pilot House Ventures, Bethesda Partners, and Pfizer Strategic Investments Group.

The company also named Mark O’Connell, former CEO of MatrixOne, as its chief executive.

The average person, however, could be forgiven for having no clue what SupplyScape actually does. According to the company’s press releases, it makes software to “maximize product integrity and create business value for pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device companies.” Its Web site promises “collaborative pharmaceutical value chains” that improve “security and profitability.” As it turns out, the company’s software helps track and trace drugs from their point of manufacture through various distribution channels in order to guard against counterfeits, at least so far as I can tell from its Web site.

Cancer screener NeoMatrix raises $9.6M — San Diego’s NeoMatrix, a company focused on early detection of breast cancer, raised $9.6 million in a third funding round. Private investors provided the funding, the company told me. (Its release doesn’t include these details.) Out of sheer coincidence, two southern California businessmen — Anthony Ciabattoni and Richard Franco Sr. — also just joined the company’s board (see the release for details).

Founded in 2000, NeoMatrix sells a screening test that detects pre-malignant or malignant cells in “nipple aspirate fluid,” which is extracted from the breast using a “gentle” suction device. The company said the new funds will allow it to hire its first sales reps, expand its marketing efforts and to convert or retire remaining debt the company used to finance development of its test.

Lectus draws in £3M for MS drugs — Cambridge, England-based Lectus Therapeutics, a biotech focused on a class of drugs known as ion-channel modulators, raised £3 million ($6.1 million) in funding from the Wellcome Trust. The investment is intended specifically to fund development of drugs for multiple sclerosis. Lectus had previously identified its primary disease interests as urinary bladder disorders, pain and angina.

Cell imager Cyntellect adds $3M in funding — Cytellect, a San Diego developer of cell imaging and manipulation systems, raised an additional $3 million in a fourth funding round, bringing the total for the round to $18.1 million. Bru II Venture Capital Fund, based in Reykjavik, Iceland, provided the additional funding.

Cyntellect’s laser-based equipment makes it possible to fluorescently image cells, isolate and destroy unwanted cells in a sample, and to “optoinject” various molecules directly into cells. See our previous coverage here.

UPDATE (10am PT): Added items on Cyntellect, Lectus Therapeutics, NeoMatrix, Nexstim, Pearl Therapeutics, and Proteon Therapeutics.