VentureBeat

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Vantia Thera spins out of Ferring, raises £19M (PDF release)
• Third Eye gets $150K for intracranial-pressure monitor (release)
• Diabetes tester Oculir closes doors, returns capital (VentureWire)
• Catalyst Health Ventures raising $60M fund (VentureWire)

Vantia Thera spins out of Ferring, raises £19M – Vantia Therapeutics, a U.K. spinout of Ferring Pharmaceuticals, has launched and raised £19 million ($37.7 million) in a first funding round (PDF link). Investors included MVM Life Science Partners, SV Life Sciences and Novo A/S.

Vantia inherits a collection of traditional “small molecule” drugs from its parent, including two that are already in clinical trials. Both drug candidate target the hormone vasopressin, which among other things regulates the body’s retention of water. One candidate is being tested as a possible treatment for enlarged prostate, the other for painful menstruation.

Diabetes tester Oculir closes doors, returns capital – Oculir Inc., a San Diego startup that aimed to develop a non-invasive glucose-testing device for diabetics, has instead shut down, VentureWire reports. The startup, founded in 2003, was working on technology designed to measure blood-sugar levels using infrared light bounced off the white of the eye. Such testing currently requires diabetics to prick their fingers for a tiny blood sample, often several times a day.

Unfortunately, the technology proved too challenging for the company and its backers. “It turned into a research project, and our venture investors wanted to invest in development, not research,” CEO John Burd told the news service.

Oculir raised $7.3 million back in December 2005 from Onset Ventures, CHL Medical Partners, Canaan Partners, Three Arch Partners, Shepherd Ventures and Windamere Venture Partners. It now plans to return an undisclosed sum to its investors — a fairly clear sign that Oculir’s VCs demanded that the company wind down its operations.

Catalyst Health Ventures raising $60M fund – Catalyst Health Ventures, a Newton, Mass., VC firm, hopes to raise a $60 million second fund, VentureWire reported. The fund will invest in medical-device, diagnostics, instrument and drug-screening startups.

Catalyst had pulled in $3.5 million of a planned $25 million as of Feb. 14. The firm intends to focus on early-stage companies and is looking to invest in six or more startups, often with initial investments of $2 million to $3 million.

Featured companies: Accenx, Chlorogen, Third Rock Ventures

Ex-Millennium execs found new life-sciences venture fund, raise $378M — Several former executives of Millennium Pharmaceuticals have founded a new Boston-based venture firm called Third Rock Ventures and raised $378 million for early-stage investments.

The Millennium connection runs so deep you’d be forgiven for thinking the company had simply spun out a venture-capital arm. Third Rock’s partners include Millennium founder and former CEO Mark Levin; former Millennium CFO Kevin Starr; former Millennium R&D chief Robert Tepper; Nick Leschly, a former project leader for Millennium’s cancer drug Velcade; and Lou Tartaglia, Millennium’s former vice president of new ventures. The only non-Millennium alum listed among the partners is Anne-Mari Paster, former CFO of MPM Capital.

Of course, most of these ex-Millenniarians have gone on to other ventures in the meantime, but it’s still unusual to see folks putting the band back together this way. No word yet as to whether they’re on a mission from God; all Third Rock is saying is that it intends to fund biotech drugs and medical devices with “the potential for broad applications, market leadership and extraordinary value creation.” In other words, pretty much the same strategy as every other venture-capital firm ever created. (To be fair, Third Rock says it hopes to focus on companies with platform technologies capable of creating drugs or devices in a variety of medical conditions.)

Forbes’ Matthew Herper has more here.

Accenx Tech pulls in $3M for healthcare IT — Irvine, Calif.-based Accenx Technologies, a provider of healthcare “interoperability” software, raised $3 million in a first funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). National Healthcare Services, the investment arm of the nonprofit MemorialCare Medical Centers in southern California.

Accenx makes software, sold as a service, that connects electronic medical records in doctors’ offices to hospital information systems. The company was founded in 1997 and told VentureWire that it has previously funded itself through its “organic growth.” The funding will allow the company to ramp up sales and improve the quality of its software services and may carry it through to breakeven.

Chlorogen shuts down, sells off assets — St. Louis-based Chlorogen, once a promising plant-science based startup, is closing down and selling off its assets. The company modified tobacco plants to produce proteins that might be used as drugs, and raised a total of $11 million in venture capital. Its technology, however, remained at an early stage, apparently leading its backers to decide to shutter it and sell off its work to larger companies such as Dow Agrosciences rather than putting in the time and financial resources necessary to develop it further.

Venrock names new life-science members — The Menlo Park, Calif., venture-capital firm Venrock hired Steve Goldby and Ken Song as partner and vice president, respectively, to oversee energy and healthcare investments. Goldby has spent 30 years in the life-science, material and software industries, including nine years as CEO of Venrock-backed Symyx Technologies. Song has spent 10 years in biomedical research at MIT’s Whitehead Institute, UCSF and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.