VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Stent maker IDev Tech raises $25M (VentureWire)
• Xytis gets $15M for brain-injury drugs (VentureWire)
• Diagnostic maker Iris Biotech plans to go public, launch breast-cancer test (Edgar)
• RiverVest Venture Partners raises $75M life-science fund (release)
• Concentric Medical names Maria Sainz CEO (release)

[Note: I'm a little sad to announce that this will be my last life-science briefing at VentureBeat, although with luck, it won't be the end of my time here. Starting Monday, I'll be blogging regularly on the drug industry and healthcare over at BNET Industries, a new CNET venture, so drop by if you can. (Preparing for that move is the main reason non-briefing posts have been scarce recently.) I still hope to post here occasionally as well, since covering below-the-radar startups has been a blast, and I'm not ready to give it up quite yet.

It's been a great year -- my first VentureBeat post was on April 3, 2007 -- and I want to thank Matt for the opportunity to join you here, and all our regular readers and commenters for your time and your insights. As journalists, we're only as good as our sources and readers, and you guys have helped in countless ways to make me look much smarter than I really am. --D.P.H.]

Stent maker IDev Tech raises $25M – IDev Technologies, a Houston medical-device startup, raised $25 million in a third funding round, VentureWire reports. The company is developing a new type of stent for use in propping open the liver’s bile ducts .

The company’s existing investors, a group that includes Bay City Capital, Heron Capital, PTB Sciences and RiverVest Venture Partners, provided the funding. IDev had previously raised $24 million, according to VW.

Xytis gets $15M for brain-injury drugs – Irvine, Calif.-based Xytis, a biotech focused on disorders of the central nervous system, raised $15 million in an extension of its second funding round, VentureWire reports. Its backers included Atlas Venture, CDC Innovation, Sanderling Ventures and Ventech.

The company says it was founded in 2005 from the merger of Xytis Pharmaceuticals and Remergent. (Sounds more to me like Xytis swallowed Remergent, but they’re free to describe it however they’d like.) Its lead drug candidate, XY2405, blocks a cellular protein called the Bradykinin B2 receptor, a signaling molecule thought to promote inflammation.

Xytis is testing the drug as a potential treatment for traumatic brain injury; the molecule is currently in mid-stage, phase II trials. The company is also testing an antidepressant in early-stage trials.

Xytis raised half the money last August, then received the second $7.5 million in April, the company told VentureWire. It has previously raised $24.5 million in its current incarnation, and its “predecessor companies” pulled in $6.5 million.

Diagnostic maker Iris Biotech plans to go public, launch breast-cancer test – Santa Clara, Calif.-based Iris Biotechnologies, a developer of molecular diagnostic tests, is preparing to go public, VentureWire reports. The company plans a small offering on the OTC Bulletin Board — if I’m reading its latest SEC filing correctly, its existing shareholders will raise about $1.1 million, with no proceeds headed to the company  — and hopes to launch a breast-cancer test later this year.

Iris plans to use chips to measure gene activity in breast cancer, with the hope of predicting the odds that a surgically removed tumor will recur and, eventually, helping patients and doctors customize cancer treatment from an early stage. The company claims that it will be competitive with Genomic Health and Agendia, two companies with similar tests for predicting breast-cancer recurrence.

There’s something a little odd about Iris’ disclosures in the SEC forms, though. Iris doesn’t describe its technology, the genes it will test or how it settled on them in any detail, and spends almost as much time talking about its database of patient information and related computer technology as it does about its tests. While it may consider some or all of that information a trade secret — and disclosure requirements may well be looser for such a small offering — it’s still kind of unusual for a startup to ask outside investors to put up their money essentially on faith.

Featured companies: Adnexus Therapeutics, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cellerix, Elixir Therapeutics, GenomeQuest, Intronn, JapanBridge, JenaValve, VirXsys, Ysios Capital

[NOTE: This item is a catchup daily briefing originally posted on 9/27/07. I've edited the item's timestamp to preserve the chronological order of the briefings. --D.P.H.]

Adnexus Thera cancels IPO, sells itself to Bristol-Myers for $430M — Waltham, Mass.-based Adnexus Therapeutics, a biotech pursuing drugs against cancer and other diseases, said it would cancel plans for its IPO and instead sell itself to Bristol-Myers Squibb for $430 million in cash, or a net purchase price of $415 million once adjusted for the biotech’s cash balance. Adnexus shareholders may also receive another $75 million assuming particular developmental milestones are met.

You can find our earlier coverage of Adnexus, which filed for its IPO just last month, here and here. Adnexus is the second biotech I’m aware of that’s recent chosen an acquisition offer over facing vicissitudes of the biotech IPO market. (The other was NovaCardia; you can find our coverage here.)

Elixir Pharmaceuticals seeks $86.3M IPO — Elixir Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech focused on anti-aging, obesity and metabolic diseases, filed to raise as much as $86.3 million in an IPO. Elixir is best-known for its work with sirtuins, a class of chemicals that appear to mimic the anti-aging effects of calorie-restricted diets. A similar company founded by a competing set of researchers, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, raised $60 million in an IPO last May. (See our coverage here.)

Neither company, however, emphasizes its work with the potentially anti-aging molecules, and instead play up their interest in treating a cluster of diseases such as diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders. Elixir’s two leading candidates on that front treat diabetes, and were licensed from Japan’s Kissei Pharmaceutical.

Interestingly enough, Elixir’s SEC filing also lists “healthcare reform measures” as a risk that could “hinder or prevent” the company’s success. For what it’s worth, Elixir also thinks patent reform poses a threat.

“Adult” stem-cell company Cellerix raises €27.2M — Spain’s Cellerix, a company aiming to use so-called adult stem cells as a treatment for skin regeneration and autoimmune-related defects known as fistulas, raised €27.2 million ($32 million). Investors included Life Sciences Partners, Ventech, Ysios Capital Partners, Roche Venture Fund, Novartis Venture Fund, Genetrix, Grupo A&G, Spanish investor Jose Antonio Matji and Cellerix management.

Celletrix was spun out of the Spanish biotech company Genetrix, which remains its majority shareholder. Celletrix has two products in clinical tests. One uses stem cells derived from the patient’s own fatty tissue to treat fistulas, which are abnormal connections between organs and skin or between different organs. The other treats a blistering skin condition known as epidermolysis bullosa using a combination of cells — although apparently not stem cells — from the patient and a universal donor.

Ysios Capital seeks €65M for life-science fund — Spanish venture-capital firm Ysios Capital Partners is looking to raise €65 million ($91 million) for its first life-sciences fund. (Their PDF release is here.)

The firm envisions making investments of between €500,000 and €4 million in early-to-late-stage companies in biotech, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and medical technology. Ysios plans to make the majority of its investments in Spanish companies, but expects it may devote up to 30 percent of the fund outside of Spain.

Heart-device maker JenaValve pulls in an extra €10M — Munich-based JenaValve, makers of a minimally invasive replacement for aortic heart valves, raised an additional €10 million ($14 million) in order to win European approval of the device, VentureWire reports. Investors included Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, NewMed Management and Atlas Venture.

The company said it hopes to begin marketing the device by mid-2009, after which it may seek U.S. approval as well. Prior to that, however, JenaValve is likely to seek potential acquirers, the company’s chief financial officer told VentureWire.

JapanBridge raises $6.5M for in-licensed cancer drugs — Tokyo’s JapanBridge, a specialty pharmaceutical company founded last year by Itochu and MPM Capital, raised $6.5 million in an additional first funding round. Investors included MPM Capital, Itochu and Kyowa Hakko.

The funding is intended for building its infrastructure and identifying two to four cancer drugs for in-licensing to Japan. Separately, JapanBridge said it struck a partnership with Kyowa Hakko to collaborate on cancer-drug development.

Genetic-search company GenomeQuest raises $4M — GenomeQuest, a Westborough, Mass., developer of a Web-based genetic search engine, raised $4 million in a second funding round. Investors included Mosaix Ventures, Cross Atlantic Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, and Société Générale Asset Management Alternative Investments.

GenomeQuest describes its service as a Web-based system that makes it possible for corporate researchers to search for genetic and biological information across a variety of public and private databases. In that sense, it sounds generally similar to the service offering by NextBio, which raised $7 million in June. See our previous coverage of that company here.

Gene-therapy company VirXsys acquires Intronn’s assets — Gaithersburg, Md.-based VirXsys, a gene-therapy company hoping to treat AIDS and genetic disease, acquired the core assets and preclinical programs of fellow Gaithersburg biotech Intronn. Terms of the all-stock deal weren’t disclosed. Intronn’s technology aims to reprogram gene expression by inserting genetic code at the RNA level to repair mutations or repair other damage.

For years, technology to search for people has been neglected, compared to most parts of the Web. Until now, that is.

A wave of new entrants are making it much easier to find out everything about a person, from their job, to their personalities, their age and even where they live. Forget the privacy implications, the race is on.

LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, had the field to itself a few years ago. Sites like Friendster let you search for friends, but it wasn’t ordered for full-on people search.

Only over the past year or so has there been a frantic rush to offer more sophisticated people search. Facebook, for example, has emerged into a networking tool, and increasingly a place where people search for each other. Here’s the latest string of developments:

–ZoomInfo, one of the largest contacts site that lets you search a database of people and company profiles, will announce next Wednesday it will open to let developers build create applications on its platform. ZoomInfo is one of the more mature people search sites, but for while had remained relatively closed. The public API can be found here, http://developer.zoominfo.com (this will work next week) with more documentation. ZoomInfo has already worked with Amazon A9, Compete and Xing on this. For example, take a look at Compete’s profile on CNET, and you’ll see that it carries a widget on the right with more information provided by ZoomInfo.

– ZoomInfo now lets you look up full profiles at its site, and through widgets via its API; it merely limits the number of searches you can do on people. You have to pay to search high numbers of people, and to search by certain sub-category of occupation, for example. Related: ZoomInfo and a business networking site, Xing, announced a partnership to integrate their services in June, and there’s news next week on that front too. Xing adds the networking features that ZoomInfo hadn’t had until now.

– Viadeo, is a French-based company that lets you add a profile and then search for contacts according to industry they work in, or any other number of variables. It also lets you search for jobs. We registered, tried it out and found it functional. Each person tags themselves according to subjects they’re interested in, and people can get in touch with each other. The company is similar to LinkedIn. It just raised €5 million in funding (see Mashable) from its existing backers AGF Private Equity and Ventech. It has more than 1.3 million members. It now operates in several European countries, and is expanding into Chinese via a partnership with Tianji, a Chinese social network. (screenshot at bottom)

– Yahoo China has just released a new version of its search, Yahoo.cn, that includes a people search, though it’s focused on celebrities. Yahoo uses information extraction technology and semantic analysis to create a Flash-based map of relationships, along with explanations of why they are related to and the sources of the information. China Web 2.0 provides an example of Jack Ma. Another Chinese company, Koowo, reportedly got $5.5 million for among other things, a similar mapping of Chinese stars. However, the downside is that these offerings often appear to be inaccurate. Finally, there’s Ucloo, the Chinese people search, that last we heard was looking to raise a round of capital.

– Spock, the Silicon Valley start-up focused on people search, got off to a good start mid last month, when it hit the list of fastest growing sites, according to Alexa, even if it had some well-reported snafus (Spock lets users tag other people in profiles with words to describe them, and some people have complained about being tagged with insulting words). It joins Wink, another Silicon Valley company focused on people search.

–And this just in: There’s a new company called PeekYou. However, it looks considerably more lightweight, compared to Spock and others, perhaps because it has just launched, with less preparation than the others (Techcrunch has more).

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.

Amgen suddenly has a voracious appetite for startups. In its second deal this week, the biotech giant acquired Cambridge, Mass., biotech Alantos Pharmaceuticals for $300 million in cash. (The release is here.)

Founded in Heidelberg, Germany in 1999, Alantos changed its name from Therascope in 2003 and moved to Cambridge in 2004. The company develops traditional “small molecule” drugs — that is, therapies that can be delivered as pills rather than shots — for a variety of conditions; its lead candidate is a novel type of diabetes drug called a DPP-IV inhibitor now in early-stage trials. Should it succeed, that drug seems likely to face significant competition; Merck’s DPP-IV inhibitor Januvia is already on the market, and several other pharmas and biotechs are pursuing their own.

According to VentureWire (subscription required), Alantos’ backers included Oxford Bioscience Partners, SV Life Sciences, Heidelberg Innovation, Ventech and ABN Amro. It has raised a total of $47 million, making this a nice payday for the company’s European investors.

Following Amgen’s $420 million acquisition of Ilypsa, that makes $720 million the big biotech has dropped on startups this week — a substantial sum by any measure. Last fall, Amgen also acquired Mountain View, Calif.-based Avidia for up to $380 million, so that’s well over $1 billion it has committed to startup acquisitions over the past nine months.

The mini-spree marks a recent departure for the biotech, which over the past five years has tended to acquire other public biotechs with marketed or late-stage products such as Immunex, Abgenix and Tularik. It suggests that Amgen is feeling some pressure to refill its pipeline, although since the payoff is still likely some time away, it likely isn’t related to the company’s recent problems with its anemia-drug franchise or its new colon-cancer drug Vectibix.