VentureBeat

Third-generation spinout Alverix, a San Jose, Calif., maker of hand-held devices for medical diagnostic use, raised $7.7 million in a first funding round. Safeguard Scientifics and New Venture Partners provided the cash.

The startup, which just spun out of Avago Technologies — itself a twice-removed spinout of Hewlett-Packard’s component division by way of Agilent Technologies — has spent 30 years producing optoelectronic products of one sort or another. Its current focus lies in developing portable devices that analyze laboratory diagnostic tests, particularly for tasks that previously required expensive bench-top laboratory equipment.

Alverix says its devices are not only cheaper, but also more accurate and far quicker than traditional methods for reading results from various blood and urine tests. For instance, the company says its technology can handle analysis of widely used antibody-based tests for illegal drugs, cancer, infectious disease, heart trouble and drug efficacy. Its products should make it possible to run these tests in doctors’ offices, at health clinics and even potentially at home, allowing patients to get their results far more quickly and potentially making immediate treatment possible if the results indicate a problem.

Founded just last year, Alverix aims to form partnerships with existing diagnostic companies that want to improve the accuracy and portability of their test analysis. The company doesn’t appear to have announced any such partnerships yet, although of course it might simply be keeping any such news under wraps.

Cellumen, a Pittsburgh developer of instruments and reagents for use in drug discovery, raised $8.7 million in a second financing round. Safeguard Scientifics led the round, joined by PA Early Stage Partners.

Cellumen bills itself as a “cellular systems biology” company, which doesn’t seem to mean much more than that it uses cell cultures to test whether various drug compounds might be worth exploring further — something that many other companies have been doing for years. While systems biology is a real, if still new and often not particularly well-defined, academic field, beware of companies that seize upon it as a hot new buzzword.

For instance, this paragraph from the Cellumen press release raised a red flag for me, because there’s nothing described here that the drug and biotech industries haven’t been doing for a long time:

Cellumen uses cells and surrogate systems to optimize the drug discovery process. The company’s functional biology approach puts a variety of bio-sensors and cell manipulation reagents in different types of cells, and examines their response to drugs and biologics. This measures efficacy and potential toxicity well before entering expensive clinical testing. In addition, it is also projected to improve clinical trial enrollment and increase new drug efficacy by conducting theranostic patient profiles.

Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, a Philadelphia-based maker of “molecular imaging agents” that help highlight diseased tissue in various medical scans, raised $26 million in a third round to develop early-detection products for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

AllianceBernstein and Safeguard Scientifics led the round. Previous investors including Pfizer Strategic Investments Group, the venture arm of Pfizer; Lilly Ventures, the venture arm of Eli Lilly; RK Venture Group; and BioAdvance also joined the round.

Avid’s development efforts are focused on new imaging agents for neurological problems. It recently announced initial positive results for AV-1, its lead compound for imaging the clumps of beta-amyloid protein that are often characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

The company’s release on the funding is here.