• PowerVision pulls in $20M for intraocular lenses (VentureWire)
• Heart device maker Mitralign raises $24M (release)
• LifeOnKey, electronic medical-record IT firm, draws $5M of $10M round (Globes)
• Merrion Pharma withdraws IPO filing (Edgar)
• Hi-Tech Pharmacal acquires Midlothian Labs for $5M (release)
• Anti-infective developer Calixa receives $15M (VW)

PowerVision pulls in $20M for intraocular lenses — Belmont, Calif.-based PowerVision, a device company developing implantable intraocular lenses, raised $20 million in a second funding round, VentureWire reports. Investors included Advanced Technology Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Ventures and J.P. Morgan Partners.

Although PowerVision’s Web site seems to be offline, the VW report says the company is working on fluid-controlled lenses designed to treat presbyopia, an age-related far-sightedness in which the eye loses its ability to focus on nearby objects. The PowerVision lenses apparently respond to natural muscular forces in the eye, which presumably squish around liquid in the lens to alter its shape and thereby change focus.

The new funding should carry PowerVision a third of the way through its clinical trials, which it expects to begin in late 2008 or early 2009. The company previously raised $9 million in late 2004.

Heart device maker Mitralign raises $24M — Mitralign, a Tewksbury, Mass., developer of minimally invasive methods for repairing the heart’s mitral valve, raised $24 million in a third funding round. Investors included Medtronic, Johnson and Johnson Development Corp., Oakwood Medical, Palisades Capital, Accelerated Technology Partners, Forbion, Giza, Oxford Biosciences and Triathlon Medical Venture Partners.

Mitralign is yet another device startup hoping to treat heart failure by repairing the mitral valve, which regulates the flow of blood through the heart’s left chambers. The company doesn’t seem to have divulged much about its particular technological approach yet, but we previously covered two other startups with similar aims, eValve and Cardiosolutions, here and here.

LifeOnKey, electronic medical-record IT firm, draws $5M of $10M round — LifeOnKey, a Baltimore, Md., startup offering technology to support electronic medical records, raised $5 million as part of an expected $10 million financing round. Medica Venture Partners provided the funding.

Formerly known as Global Medical Networks, LifeOnKey offers individual patients an electronic medical record that integrates their health information and access it via the Internet or mobile devices such as cellphones. The company claims to have a million subscribers in Israel and Europe, and plans to quintuple that number in 2008.

Unlike Microsoft’s HealthVault, which we reviewed here and here, LifeOnKey charges individuals to store their medical info. A basic plan starts at $50 a year, plus a $5 registration fee and another one-time $20 fee to activate a USB key-based security system. Premium plans that regularly collect, scan and incorporate paper-based medical info, among other things, cost an unspecified additional amount.

I haven’t had a chance to see what the service itself looks like, but I hope to take a closer look before long. In the meantime, there’s another major difference with the similar Microsoft service — LifeOnKey pledges to adhere to the privacy protections laid out by the federal healthcare law known as HIPAA.

Evalve’s device is designed to replace risky open-heart surgery for patients whose mitral valve, which regulates blood flow between the left two chambers of the heart, fails to close properly. The device allows interventional cardiologists to thread an implant clip through the femoral artery of the leg to the heart, where it can pin together two “leaflets” on the mitral valve.

The images at left show the mitral valve prior to the procedure and following installation of the company’s MitraClip. (Obviously, these represent a somewhat idealized view of how this is all supposed to work.) Evalve also has a video illustrating the technique at its Web site here.

The company said the funding will lay the groundwork for commercial launch of its MitraClip device in Europe and to complete late-stage human tests of the device in the U.S. Evalve is still enrolling patients in that study, which will compare MitraClip to standard open-heart surgery. and expects to complete enrollment next year. Patients will be followed for 24 months following the procedure.

Investors included BBT Fund, Delphi Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Split Rock Partners and Abbott Laboratories. Evalve isn’t alone in this market, although it appears to be ahead of one rival we’ve previously covered, Cardiosolutions (see here).

Cardiosolutions aims to restore mitral-valve function with a paddle-type implant that pushes the valve’s leaflets closed during ventricular contraction. For additional — albeit somewhat dense — explanation, plus its own video of the process, see the company’s site here.