VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Arriva Pharma recaps with $6M for respiratory anti-inflammatory drugs (release)
• Genetic tester Sciona gets another $5.2M, distribution deal (VentureWire)
• Joint resurfacer Arthrosurface takes in $4M (release)
• Automated medication dispenser MDG Medical receives $14M in debt, equity (release)
• California Stem Cell raises funds for heart, neurodegenerative treatments (release)

Arriva Pharma recaps with $6M for respiratory anti-inflammatory drugs – Arriva Pharmaceuticals, an Alameda, Calif., drug developer focused on inflammatory respiratory disease, raised $6 million in a convertible-stock funding that recapitalized the company. Investors included Nordic Biotech and MPM BioVentures.

Arriva is working on a bioengineered form — that is, one that can be manufactured via biotech methods — of an enzyme called alpha-1 antitrypsin, which is currently derived from donated blood. Natural deficiencies of the enzyme are linked to lung disease, and Arriva hopes to use a manufactured version to treat hereditary emphysema.

The company has been locked in litigation over the rights to the enzyme with the Florida startup AlphaMed Pharmaceuticals (see our coverage here), and filed for bankruptcy protection last year, according to VentureWire. Now emerging from that process, Arriva is looking to start mid-stage, phase II trials of its recombinant enzyme. Arriva is a majority-owned unit of the Dutch firm Arriva Pharmaceuticals BV.

Genetic tester Sciona gets another $5.2M, distribution deal – Sciona, a Boulder, Colo., startup that offers genetic testing related to health and well-being, raised $5.2 million in a third funding round, VentureWire reports and the company confirms. Investors included Burrill & Co., BioVentures Investors, DSM Ventures, DFJ Esprit and BASF Venture Capital. The funding brings the company’s third round to a total of at least $15 million.

Sciona claims to combine nutrition and genetics in order to help individuals live healthier lifestyles. Its tests measure genetic predisposition to particular diseases and generates nutrition, exercise and lifestyle recommendations. You might think this sort of thing sounds like it runs way ahead of what science actually knows about genetic influence on our physical traits and disease susceptibility — and you’d almost certainly be right. The glitzy Web site for the company’s tests, which resembles a late-night TV infomercial, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the company’s scientific underpinnings, either.

On top of all that, Sciona just reached a distribution arrangement with Spa Team International that will provide the companies tests through a network of 1,000 spas nationwide.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Amira Pharma strikes GSK partnership on lung, heart drugs worth up to $425M (release)
• Wolters Kluwer Health takes stake in Logical Images (release)
• Gentiva Health acquires Home Health Care Affiliates for $55M (release)
• Compuware buys Hilgraeve to upgrade healthcare IT (release)
• Touchstone Health appoints Michael Muchnicki CEO (release)
• Australia’s Xenome names Ian Nesbit as CEO (release)

Amira Pharma strikes GSK partnership on lung, heart drugs worth up to $425M – Amira Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego biotech focused on drugs for lung and heart problems, struck a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline potentially worth $425 million in upfront and milestone payments.

Amira is developing anti-inflammatory drugs based on its understanding of immune-system elements called eicosanoids. These fatty molecules are produced by white blood cells when foreign threats are perceived, triggering several different types of inflammation, which can damage healthy tissue when it’s prolonged by allergies or autoimmune disease.

Diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, atherosclerosis, arthritis and psoriasis are often the result. Amira aims to defuse the underlying inflammation caused by eicosanoids by inhibiting “upstream” molecules that are necessary for their production.

The company’s two lead candidates have entered early stage, phase I human tests. One compound targets asthma; Amira hasn’t identified which diseases the second drug is being tested in.

Under the partnership, GSK will have rights to develop and commercialize all of Amira’s compounds in its current development program, which are technically known as FLAP inhibitors (FLAP standing for 5-lipoxygenase-activating protein). In return, Amira will receive an undisclosed upfront payment, milestones related to development and potential tiered royalty payments.

Wolters Kluwer Health takes stake in Logical Images – Logical Images, a Rochester, N.Y., developer of medical image-analysis tools, sold a minority equity stake to Wolters Kluwer Health, a healthcare-information company in Conshohocken, Pa. The companies didn’t announce terms of the deal.

Logical Images makes visual healthcare tools for physicians and patients. Its products include VisualDx, a diagnostic tool designed to help physicians identify some 900 visually identifiable diseases, and VisualDxHealth, which does roughly the same thing for interested consumers. The companies said they intend to integrate VisualDx with Wolters’ product Clin-eguide, a “decision support” tool for physicians.

Featured companies: AerovectRx, Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, Harmony Information Systems, Intelligent Hospital Systems, Merrion Pharmaceuticals, Syntaxin, SymBio Pharmaceuticals

UPDATED: Expanded items on Harmony Info, SymBio Pharma and Merrion Pharma, added Dicerna item.
UPDATE REDUX: Added Syntaxin item.

U.K. biotech Syntaxin raises £16M for pain and nervous-system drugs — Syntaxin, a U.K. biotech focused on drugs that affect cell secretion, raised £16 million ($33.2 million) in a second funding round. The company’s release is here.

Investors in the round included SR One, the venture capital arm of GlaxoSmithKline; Life Science Partners; Abingworth; Johnson & Johnson Development; and Quest for Growth. Syntaxin is developing drugs derived from bacterial toxins that block the release of chemicals known as neurotransmitters, which may be useful in treating pain, respiratory disease, neurological problems and obesity and related metabolic disorders.

Harmony Info, a healthcare IT provider, raises $28M to fund acquisition and expand sales — Reston, Va.-based Harmony Information Systems, a maker of healthcare software for government agencies and nonprofits, raised $28 million in a second funding round consisting of equity and debt. Investors included JMI Equity, Updata Partners, ORIX Venture Finance and Comerica Bank.

On Monday, Harmony announced the acquisition of rival Synergy Software Technologies for undisclosed terms. Harmony provides IT systems that handle electronic medical records, billing and insurance-claims management.

Japan’s SymBio Pharma closes in on ¥2B funding — Tokyo’s SymBio Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharma founded in 2005, is near closing a ¥2 billion ($17.4 million) third round of funding, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The company is focused on acquiring and developing drugs for cancer, blood disease and autoimmune conditions.

Co-founder Lowell Sears, a former Amgen CFO and now CEO of Sears Capital Management, has long been active in the Asian pharmaceuticals market. From VentureWire:

He was a founding investor, for instance, in Peninsula Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Alameda, Calif.-based company that licensed late-stage antibiotics from Japanese companies. Johnson & Johnson acquired Peninsula in 2005, and Forest Laboratories Inc. bought Peninsula spinout Cerexa Inc. in January.

Sears and Fuminori Yoshida, whom Sears once hired to be president of Amgen’s Japanese unit, started SymBio to do the reverse of Peninsula by acquiring Asian product rights.

Like JapanBridge, an MPM Capital-founded company we wrote about here, SymBio essentially aims to acquire drugs or drug candidates from elsewhere in order to win regulatory approval and sell them in Japan.

Irish specialty pharma Merrion slashes IPO range — Dublin’s Merrion Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharma we last checked in on over the weekend, sharply lowered its expected IPO range. The company, which had hoped to sell as many as 4.6 million shares (listed in the U.S. as American Depositary Shares) for $10 to $12, now expects only $6 to $7 per ADS.

That lowers Merrion’s maximum IPO take to $32.2 million, down from an earlier $55.2 million, and gives the company a post-offering market capitalization of up to $122.9 million. Merrion rejiggers existing drugs to make them easier to take by mouth.

New RNA-interference biotech Dicerna shoots for $13M, aims to work around RNAi patents — Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a stealthy, Boston-based biotech in the field of RNA interference, aims to raise $13 million in a first funding round, the In Vivo blog reports. The company, co-founded by John Rossi of Duarte, Calif.’s City of Hope National Medical Center and Mark Behlke of Integrated DNA Technologies, is focused on making new drugs via the “gene-silencing” properties of RNAi while sidestepping a patent thicket that has grown up around the technology. The company expects to close its funding in November.

Unless you’re a nucleic-acid chemist (or a patent lawyer focused on same), the details of Dicerna’s strategy are most likely beside the point, although I’m sure the In Vivo folks would welcome your attention if you’re really interested. Suffice to say that the company’s founders believe they’re found a new way to build these gene-silencing molecules that isn’t covered by some of the fundamental patents in the field. If that’s true — and no one will really know for years, if ever — it could spark new attention from Big Pharma and other biotechs that have so far sat out the increasingly frantic, and expensive, race to make RNAi drugs.

As with any early-stage technology, it’s helpful to bear in mind that no one has yet demonstrated that RNAi molecules can even work as safe and effective drugs, much less that they’ll be the magic bullet that some have claimed. Still, a lot of money has been sloshing around the field recently (see our coverage in the third item here), and there’s little doubt that deep-pocketed folks still on the sidelines will want to at least check out Dicerna’s claims.

OTHER HEADLINES OF NOTE:

• IH Systems pulls in $7.6M for robot syringe-filler (release)
• AerovectRx names Ed Cannon as new CEO (release)

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.