Life-science briefing: Thursday, April 3, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
Mirna Thera spins out of Asuragen with $3M (release)
Stroke-therapy startup CoAxia raises $12M (release)
Stealthy device maker Synvascular gets $6.5M (peHUB)
AndroScience seeks $3.5M for anti-testosterone drugs (VentureWire)
Austria’s ProtAffin takes in €1.1M grant (release)
Singapore’s Moleac receives $3.5M for Chinese medicine (release)
Alethia Bio gets C$2.4M for antibody drugs (release)
Alba Thera names Bruce Peacock as CEO (release)
SkinMedica names Mary Fisher as CEO (release)
Mirna Thera spins out of Asuragen with $3M – Mirna Therapeutics, a newly minted Austin, Tex., startup focused… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
Immune-system specialty pharma Circassia raises £11M (release)
Cancer-biomarker biotech CS-Keys takes in $6.3M (release)
Neuro-robotic device maker Myomo receives $3M (VentureWire)
Micropharma draws C$1.8M for nutraceutical delivery (VentureWire)
Avalon Labs gets $66M for disposable life-support components (release)
Gloucester Pharma names Alan Colowick as CEO (release)
ConforMIS names Philipp Lang as CEO (release)
Pharma-marketing firm TargetRx names Craig Scott as CEO (release)
Immune-system specialty pharma Circassia raises £11M – Circassia, an Oxford, England biotech focused on immune-system disorders, raised £11 million ($21.8 million) in… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Friday, Aug. 17, 2007
Featured companies: Concentric Medical, Vertebration, Vision RT, Kemeta
Clotbuster Concentric Medical files for $69M IPO — Mountain View, Calif.-based Concentric Medical, which makes and markets devices for removing dangerous blood clots from the brains of stroke patients, filed to raise up to $69 million in an initial offering. The company’s devices consist of catheters that are threaded into the body’s circulatory system via the femoral artery in the groin and passed into the brain to the site… Continue Reading
Life sciences briefing: Friday, Aug. 10, 2007
(CORRECTED: See below.)
Featured companies: VistaGen Therapeutics, MindWeavers, Cutanea Life Sciences, Heptares Therapeutics
VistaGen raises $3.75M for stem-cell based drug discovery — South San Francisco, Calif.-based VistaGen Therapeutics, a biotech that uses human embryonic stem cells to discover new drugs, raised $3.75 million in a bridge financing as it prepares to raise up to $20 million in a fourth round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). Montaur Capital Partners provided the funding.
VistaGen, founded in 1998, isn’t your typical stem-cell company. Where… Continue Reading
Roundup: Biogenerics bill in limbo, clashing data on health IT benefits, the RNAi boom, and more
House-Senate confrontation set over biogenerics – Late last month, a key group of senators reached agreement on legislative provisions that would authorize copycat versions of biotech drugs, which are typically complex proteins manufactured by genetically engineered cells (see details here and here). These provisions would finally put biotech drugs — which don’t face cut-rate competition once their key patents expire — on a par with traditional pharmaceuticals, and have been a long time in coming. They’re… Continue Reading
Neuromodulator Intelect Medical raises $7M for brain disorders
Intelect Medical, a Cleveland developer of neuromodulation devices for the treatment of brain injury, raised $7 million in a second funding round. The company is currently exploring ways of using deep-brain stimulation, in which implanted electrodes zap particular regions of the brain with calibrated jolts of electricity, in order to rehabilitate brains damaged by injury or stroke. DBS — which is sometimes described as a “pacemaker for the brain” — is currently approved for the… Continue Reading