VentureBeat

Tesla Motors may have significant competition in the high-end electric vehicle space soon, if Fisker Automotive continues on its current path. The Irvine, Calif. sports car company just announced another $65 million in funding, led by a Middle Eastern firm, the Qatar Investment Authority.

Design work is well underway on Fisker’s first car, the Karma. Unlike Tesla’s model, the Roadster, Fisker is planning on making the Karma a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), which should make it more practical for regular or long-distance driving — assuming anyone is looking for practicality in luxury sports cars that cost double the average person’s yearly income.

However, Fisker is following Tesla’s lead in outsourcing its manufacturing. The company announced a couple months back that Valmet, a Norwegian contractor, would build the Karma starting late next year. Once fully scaled up, Fisker expects to make, and hopefully sell, around 15,000 vehicles per year.

Building a car is notoriously difficult, so it should be interesting to see whether Fisker can stick to its deadlines. Its fundings so far suggest that it’s making good progress. Along with its rounds from previous backers Palo Alto Investors and Kleiner Perkins (who also joined this investment), Fisker has taken over $75 million. But ultimately, the company will need double that amount or more to bring its plans to fruition.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Topical Botox maker Revance gets $43M, option to be acquired by Medicis (release)
• Reva Medical draws $42M for resorbable stents (release)
• AccentCare raises $8M for senior home-care services (VentureWire, sub req’d)
• Light Dimensions aims for $6M for light-based skin treatment (VW)
• Carigent pulls in $2M for nanoparticle drugs (release)
• Celtic Pharma shoots for $1.5B in two drug-investment funds (VW)

Topical Botox developer Revance gets $43M, option to be acquired by Medicis — Mountain View, Calif.-based Revance Therapeutics, a developer of a Botox-like topical cream for wrinkle treatment and excessive sweating, raised $43.2 million in a third funding round. Medicis, a dermatology-products company in Scottsdale, Ariz., invested $20 million in the round and promised up to $5 million more in exchange for an option to acquire Revance or to exclusively license its botulinum-toxin drug.

The deal values Revance at approximately $200 million. Other investors in the round include Essex Woodlands Healthcare Ventures, Vivo Ventures, Technology Partners, Shepherd Ventures, and Palo Alto Investors. The Medicis options will extend through mid-stage human tests of the company’s botulinum-toxin drug.

Reva Medical draws $42M for resorbable stents — Reva Medical, a San Diego device maker focused on artery-opening stents that can be broken down and reabsorbed by the body, raised $42 million in a private financing. Cerberus Capital Management and Brookside Capital led the round, joined by Pequot Capital Management, Medtronic, Domain Partners and Group Outcome LLC.

Stents are used to prop open clogged arteries following a heart attack or other cardiovascular problems. The expandable mesh tubes, however, can also lead to additional problems down the line, such as the formation of scar tissue that can reblock vessels and even the creation of dangerous blood clots. Several companies are now pursuing stents that last just long enough for a previously clogged vessel to heal; we covered a Paris-based startup in this field, Arterial Remodeling Technologies, here.

Carigent pulls in $2M for nanoparticle drugs — New Haven, Conn.-based Carigent Therapeutics, a biotech developing new drugs based on nanoparticles that take aim at particular biological targets, raised $2 million in a first funding round. Saint Simeon Marketing and Investments provided the funding.

Carigent’s approach is to envelop drugs in a biodegradeable nanoparticle, which then will be coated with antibodies or other molecules designed to “anchor” the particle on or wthin certain cells or tissues. We’ve covered the company previously here.

(UPDATED: See below.) Paracor Medical, a Sunnyvale, Calif., startup developing a mesh restraint designed to support failing hearts, raised $44.35 million in a fourth round of funding. The company is vying with another device startup, Acorn Cardiovascular, to prove that this sort of device works and to bring it to market.

The idea behind Paracor’s device, which it calls HeartNet, is simple. In heart failure, a general term for a variety of similar conditions with different causes, the heart muscle grows progressively weaker and loses the ability to pump enough blood through the body. In many cases, the heart reacts to its reduced pumping strength by enlarging, which temporarily makes it possible to contract more strongly. Over time, however, the enlarged heart tires again, triggering a new cycle of enlargement and weakness.

Paracor’s HeartNet is an elastic metal-alloy mesh designed to wrap around the heart and support it, theoretically improving its efficiency and slowing or stopping failure-related expansion of the muscle. (See the photo above.) Doctors stretch this mesh over a still-beating heart via a less-invasive form of the surgery known as a thoracotomy, which Paracor calls a “mini-thoracotomy.” (For some mildly gory photos, see this research abstract, which is a PDF file.)

In early clinical trials, heart-failure patients who received the mesh were able to walk farther, reported fewer symptoms and witnessed improvement in a variety of heart-related measurements such as oxygen transport and utilization. Paracor is currently enrolling volunteers in a large, randomized study of the device in 272 patients, which company officials hope will allow them to apply for FDA approval by 2010, according to VentureWire (subscription required).

Acorn’s experience, however, provides a cautionary tale. The St. Paul, Minn., company is developing a similar polyethylene mesh wrap called CorCap, which it already markets in Europe (see its PDF brochure here). CorCap requires a full open-chest surgery (see slide #8 in this PowerPoint deck) and can complicate subsequent heart surgeries.

In a 300 patient trial, CorCap appeared to improve a variety of outcomes for patients who received it. Last December, however, an FDA dispute-resolution panel said the company would need to conduct an additional clinical trial before the agency would consider U.S. approval, after an FDA advisory panel recommended against approval in 2005. Some panel members called the study a “quagmire” because of its poor design and statistical anomalies. Acorn hovered on the brink of dissolution until this May, when it reached an agreement with the FDA to conduct a 50 patient confirmatory trial for which it is currently raising $15 million, the company told VentureWire.

Paracor’s funding round was led by Aberdare Partners, joined by Montagu Newhall Associates and existing investors Delphi Ventures, Pequot Ventures, InterWest Partners, Alta Partners, De Novo Ventures, Saratoga Ventures, and Palo Alto Investors. The company said the new funds will support its pivotal trial of HeartNet.

UPDATED: Expanded and rewritten throughout.