VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Affinergy gets $3M in grants for biological “linkers” (release)
• Specialty pharma EUSA raises $50M, spends $23M for public biotech Cytogen (release)
• Calderome takes in $12M for cancer diagnostics (peHUB)
• Pulse Health raises $2M for handheld free-radical device (release)
  
• LifeMasters takes in $15M for wellness, disease-management programs (release)
• Dubai Techno Park launched $300MVC fund for life sciences, other sectors (release)

Affinergy gets $3M in grants for biological “linkers” – Affinergy, a Duke University spinout in Research Triangle Park, N.C., received grants worth more than $3 milllion to support development of biological “linker” molecules with potential uses in coatings for medical devices and the development of new therapeutics. The grants were awarded by the federal National Institutes of Health through its small-business innovation research program.

The startup is developing biological molecules that can selectively bind various substances to particular surfaces. Such linkage molecules could, for instance, attach healing growth factors to surgical meshes or other implanted biomaterials or help target drugs at particular cell-surface proteins. The company hasn’t described its goals in much detail, although it said one of the grants is for work aimed at accelerating a patient’s natural healing process.

Specialty pharma EUSA raises $50M, spends $23M for public biotech Cytogen – In today’s man-bites-dog news, the venture-backed specialty pharma EUSA Pharma agreed to acquire the publicly traded biotech Cytogen for $22.6 million. The EUSA release is here; Cytogen has its own release here.

In one sense, the news isn’t terribly surprising, as Cytogen effectively put itself up for sale last November when it announced it was “reviewing strategic alternatives.” The twist here is that EUSA is taking the biotech private — a sign of just how far Cytogen’s fortunes have fallen since the heady days of the 1999-2000 biotech bubble, when its stock almost touched $200 a share. EUSA, which has offices in Doylestown, Pa., and Oxford, England, is offering 62 cents a share, a 35 percent premium over Cytogen’s closing price yesterday of 46 cents.

On the business front, however, it’s hard to say that the combination will be much more exciting than either company has been individually. Both EUSA and Cytogen traffic in a range of largely unrelated drugs for pain and cancer treatment.

EUSA raised $50 million to finance the cash transaction, for working capital and to restructure Cytogen. Investors included TVM Capital, Essex Woodlands, 3i, Goldman Sachs, Advent Venture Partners, SV Life Sciences, NeoMed and NovaQuest.

Calderome takes in $12M for cancer diagnostics – Calderome (no Web site), a South San Francisco, Calif., developer of cancer diagnostics, has taken in $11.9 million of a $23 million first funding round, peHUB reports. (peHUB identifies the company as located in Menlo Park, Calif., but two Calderome job postings on Biospace indicate its headquarters are actually in South San Francisco.)

In fact, I’m loving job listings at the moment, because the company also advertised one of those positions on Craigslist here. According to that listing:

Calderome, Inc. is an early stage cancer diagnostics company addressing the emerging opportunities in personalized medicine. The Company’s strategic vision is to develop a novel molecular cytology approach to improve the diagnosis of cancer, saving patients thousands of unnecessary surgeries every year. The company has spent the last year validating its business model with key stakeholders: physicians, patients and payers and has recently closed a significant round of private equity financing with premier venture capital investors….

In other words, it sounds very much like the company is developing a cell-based diagnostic, possibly involving a test that can pick up tumor cells that circulate in the bloodstream, that can help diagnose cancer without the need for invasive biopsies. That’s merely speculation, however.

Investors in the round include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, TPG Biotechnology Partners and Versant Ventures.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Arbor Surgical draws another $5.5M for heart-valve replacements (VBLS exclusive)
• AstraZeneca spinout Albireo raises $27M for GI drugs (release)
• Knee-implant maker MAKO Surgical slashes IPO price range (release)
• eScreen takes in $8M for automated drug screening (peHUB)
• GlucoLight gets undisclosed funding for glucose monitoring (release)
• Oddo et al. order $4M for odor-sniffer Odotech (release)
• Baird Capital Partners acquires med-device manufacturer Ellman Int’l (peHUB)
• Cancer biotech BiPar names Hoyoung Huh as CEO (release)

AstraZeneca spinout Albireo raises $27M for GI drugs – AstraZeneca spun out a new biotech startup, Albireo (no Web site), with the help of venture backers who provided $27 million in a first funding round. Investors included Nomura Phase4 Ventures, TVM Capital and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership.

Albireo, which will be based in Gothenburg, Sweden, will focus on unspecified gastrointestinal diseases. The company will take over one experimental drug that is already in clinical testing, plus a number of other candidates at earlier stages of development. Albireo anticipates expanding its first round of funding to as much as $40 million.

Knee-implant maker MAKO Surgical slashes IPO price range – Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based MAKO Surgical, a developer of knee implants and associated robotic-surgery systems, slashed its expected IPO pricing by 30 percent. The company now expects its shares to price between $10 and $11 apiece, down from an earlier range of $14 to $16.

MAKO now stands to raise no more than $63.8 million, down from as much as $93.8 million under its previous expectation. Following the offering — if it takes place — the company could have a market capitalization of as much as $202.4 million.

The retrenchment is the latest sign of trouble brewing in the life-sciences IPO market, which wasn’t actually all that healthy to begin with. Should MAKO fail to price its offering, it would become the eighth life-science startup to yank its IPO this year — assuming no other company gets there first, that is.

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.

Arteris, a Paris, France company that offers software for designing “network on chip” semiconductors, so named because they involve communications within a chip, has raised an $8.1 million second round of financing.

The company is moving its formal headquarters to San Jose, Calif., where is has an office.

The company’s statement is here.

The round was led by a new investor Synopsys, a semiconductor design company, while existing backers Crescendo Ventures, TVM Capital and Ventech participated.

Arteris has now raised a total of $20 million since 2003.

Noxxon Pharma, a Berlin-based biotech, raised 37 million euros ($50 million) to help push its first aptamer-based drug candidates for kidney and eye disease into clinical trials.

The main new investors included TVM Capital, Sofinnova Partners, and Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners.

Aptamers are short stretches of DNA or RNA — generally known as oligonucleotides — that are designed specifically via an evolution-style process to latch onto a specific protein or other biological target. Because their drug properties could rival those of antibodies — currently used in hit drugs such as Genentech’s Avastin — while being far easier to make, aptamers have drawn a fair amount of excitement over the years. But the first aptamer-based drug, Eyetech Pharmaceutical’s Macugen for age-related macular degeneration, has been a disappointment in the marketplace — in part because a Genentech antibody-based drug appeared to demonstrate superior results.

Check out Noxxon’s release here (HTML) or here (PDF).