TODAY’S HEADLINES:
- Precision Thera merger with “blank check” Oracle Healthcare collapses (release)
- Sleep Solutions takes in $21M for sleep-apnea diagnostics (release)
- Trevena takes in $24M for drugs targeting G-proteins (release)
- “Specialty biotech” PanGenetics gets €23M for antibody drugs (release)
- Cancer-drug maker Unibioscreen pulls in €5M (release)
- Danish contract manufacturer CMC Biologics raises new funding (PDF release)
- EDF Ventures postpones fourth healthcare fund (peHUB)
- Liquidia Tech names Neal Fowler as CEO (release)
(NOTE: Sorry for the minimal posting yesterday — I was at the Health 2.0 conference with extremely limited Internet connectivity. Normal posting resumes today.)
Precision Thera merger with “blank check” Oracle Healthcare collapses – Another one bites the dust.
The saga of Precision Therapeutics, a Pittsburgh biotech developing what struck me last August as a particularly crude type of cancer-chemotherapy diagnostic, continues apace. In a tersely worded press release, the special-purpose acquisition company Oracle Healthcare Acquisition said it has terminated its planned merger with Precision. The release blamed “currently prevailing market conditions” for the decision, which carries some fairly ominous consequences for both sides.
Oracle’s plight is fairly simple: The blank-check company will now dissolve itself and return the money it raised, minus expenses, to investors. For Precision, however, the outlook is much starker. The merger would not only have taken the company public, it would have left Precision with $120 million in cash, ample resources to bolster sales of its ChemoFx test and to develop new potential products.
Now, after getting jilted at the altar by Oracle and withdrawing its IPO, the startup is most likely almost out of cash. As of September 30, Precision had only $15.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and a working-capital deficit of $1.1 million against debts of $17 million — plus a burn rate of roughly $3 million a quarter. Those numbers don’t look good by any measure
The first real sign the merger was in trouble came just about two weeks ago, when Oracle and Precision effectively cut the overall size of the deal by 15 percent — never a good sign. Oracle’s decision to walk away remains murky to me given the complexity of the deal, and external market events might have somehow triggered provisions that made the acquisition untenable. But I can’t help wondering if the buyers may have simply concluded that Precision’s prospects weren’t at all what they once thought.
Sleep Solutions takes in $21M for sleep-apnea diagnostics – Sleep Solutions, a Pasadena, Md., developer of diagnostic devices for sleep apnea, raised $20.5 million in a new funding round. Investors included TPG Biotechnology, MedVenture Associates, Emergent Ventures and Lava Ventures.
Sleep Solutions has developed a home-use diagnostic device for identifying sleep apnea, which are breathing difficulties during sleep. Diagnosing apnea has traditionally required patients to spend the night in a sleep laboratory. Left untreated, apnea can increase the risk of more serious problems, including stroke and heart attack.
Trevena takes in $24M for drugs targeting G-proteins – Trevena (no Web site), a Berwyn, Penn., biotech focused on a new area of drug discovery, raised $24 million in a first funding round. Investors included Alta Partners, Healthcare Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Polaris Venture Partners.
Like many biotechs, Trevena plans to develop drugs that attack a particular biological mechanism rather than any particular disease. In this case, the company is targeting a class of proteins known as G-protein coupled receptors, or GPCR, which according to the company are affected by close to 40 percent of all drugs on the market today. The company didn’t describe its plans in any detail.
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
- InfraReDx takes $17M for arterial-plaque detection (VentureWire)
- Life-sciences fund Longitude Capital raises $95M (VentureWire)
InfraReDx takes $17M for arterial-plaque detection – InfraReDx, a Burlington, Mass., developer of diagonstic systems that detect arterial plaque, raised $17 million in a third funding round, VentureWire reports. Sanderling Ventures led the round, joined by new and previous individual investors.
InfraReDx previously planned to raise up to $40 million in order to support expected commercialization of its near-infrared device, which can identify buildups of arterial plaque that can rupture and lead to heart attacks (see our coverage). The test, however, requires a minimally invasive procedure in which the device is threaded into a patient’s circulatory system, making the InfraReDx device primarily useful for preventing second heart attacks in patients who are being treated for their first.
The company submitted its device for FDA approval in October, and is planning on a limited rollout if the device is cleared this quarter, as InfraReDx expects.
Life-sciences fund Longitude Capital raises $95M – Menlo Park, Calif.-based Longitude Partners, a spinout of Pequot Ventures, raised $95 million of an anticipated $325 million first fund, VentureWire reports. The fund will invest in biotech, medical-device and drug-development startups.
InSound Medical, a medical-device startup in Newark, Calif., wants to let people with hearing loss regain that sense without having to wear a conspicuous hearing aid. Instead of clipping around the ear or fitting precariously into the opening of the auditory canal, the company’s Lyric hearing aid is implanted deeper into that canal, where it can remain for up to four months.
The device uses an extended-wear battery and is implanted in a non-surgical procedure in a doctor’s office. Every two to four months, a Lyric device must be extracted and replaced with a new device. InSound sells Lyric on a “subscription” model, in which patients buy a year’s worth of devices at a time. (That’s a company graphic of the device below.)
InSound just raised $11 million in an extension to its fifth round of funding, according to Dan Saccani, the company’s CFO. Investors in the round included De Novo Ventures, J&J Development, and CMEA Ventures.
The Lyric was cleared by the FDA in late 2002, although InSound didn’t launch it until late last year, Saccani told me. (It’s currently in limited release in the San Francisco Bay Area.) During that time, it underwent a name change — it was originally called the InSound XT — and additional engineering development.
A five-year delay between approval and product launch is pretty unusual in my experience of the medical-device industry, although I’d be the first to admit I haven’t fully grasped all of its ins and outs. The XT received fast FDA approval because it’s not a surgical device, Saccani said, adding that continuing to develop a product following FDA approval “happens all the time” in the industry.
I’m apparently not the only one a bit baffled by this situation. This 2003 article in Ear, Nose and Throat Journal also describes the San Francisco Bay Area as “the first test market for the InSound XT in 2003.”
InSound doesn’t disclose the Lyric’s price, either — in a FAQ for patients on its Web site, the company replies to the sensible question of cost by blathering on about the revolutionary nature of the device and then suggests that patients “[t]alk with your ENT physician and audiologist to discuss pricing and payment options.” (ENTs are ear, nose and throat doctors.) Saccani explained that because the Lyric is only available on a limited basis, the company is keeping pricing information “close to the vest.”
HemCon Medical Technologies, a Portland, Ore., startup that makes and sells high-tech bandages, said it will acquire Alltracel Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded but barely profitable Irish healthcare conglomerate that also has a wound-care focus. The release is here.
HemCon was only founded in 2001, but hit it big almost immediately with a new type of bandage, based on chitin found in shrimp shells, that binds to even the most severe wounds. As the Iraq War loomed, the company won FDA approval for its bandage in just 48 hours, and claims that it is now carried by every member of the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and Iraq. I wrote about them for the WSJ back at the time; a copy of that article is here.
The companies didn’t release financial details — Alltracel apparently didn’t even put out a release, which is odd for a public company — but Thomson Financial reports that Hemcon will pay £20.8 million ($40.9 million) in cash for Alltracel. Hemcon claims that the combined companies will post 2008 revenues in excess of $100 million.
That’s a pretty staggering estimate, since it looks like Alltracel barely cleared €20 million ($29.7 million) in revenue last year, and suggests that military sales and the ongoing war in Iraq have been very, very good to HemCon. The company says it’s expanding into consumer markets as well, and plans to launch an over-the-counter version of its bandage called KytoStat later this year.
HemCon last raised $12 million in March 2007; its investors included Camden Partners Holdings and Torch Hill Partners, two private-equity firms in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore axis. The company didn’t say how it will finance the Alltracel acquisition, although HemCon is presumably taking on debt, as it named Bank of America the lead institution in the financing.
The Portland Business Journal has more here.
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
- Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M (VentureWire)
- TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices (peHUB)
- Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M (release)
- “Brain fitness” trainer Dakim raises $11M (release)
- BioIQ, home-diagnostics maker, takes in $2.5M (release)
- Hospital med-tracker Sabal Medical raises funds (release)
- Seattle’s PharmaIN gets $400K NIH grant for nanoparticle staph drug (PDF release)
- SensiGen, molecular-diagnostics developer, receives Michigan state loan (release)
- Arcus Ventures aims for $50M fund, targets cancer (VentureWire)
Compact ultrasound maker Zonare Medical raises $30M – Zonare Medical Systems, a Mountain View, Calif., maker of ultrasound-imaging systems, raised $30 million in a recent seventh funding round, VentureWire reports. Existing investors provided the funding, a group that includes Frazier Healthcare Ventures, 3i Group, Mosaix Ventures, CB Health Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvestson, Ascension Health Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Earlybird, Saints Capital, Merrill Lynch Venture Capital and Texas Instruments.
The company said the funding should set it on the road to profitability and eventually to a hope-for IPO. Zonare makes compact ultrasound systems that can be used in sonography and for a variety of other medical diagnostic purposes.
TherOx raises $30M for hypersaturated-oxygen devices – TherOx, an Irvine, Calif., maker of oxygenation devices for treating heart attacks, raised $30 million in a tenth funding round, peHUB reports. Investors included Kleiner Perkins, Integral Capital Partners and New Science Ventures.
The startup makes devices that supersaturate blood with oxygen, then infuse that blood into areas of the heart at risk of damage from oxygen starvation due to a heart attack. TherOx has now raised over $120 million in venture funding.
Accumetrics, antiplatelet-drug diagnostic maker, raises $29M – San Diego’s Accumetrics, a maker of diagnostics that measure patient response to anti-platelet drugs, raised $28.8 million in a fourth round of funding. Investors included Arnerich Massena & Associates, BBT Fund, Essex Woodland Health Ventures, RiverVest, PTV Sciences, KB Partners and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.
The startup makes a system that measures how well individuals are reacting to treatment with anti-platelet drugs, which are used to prevent or help dislodge major blood clots. Since patient response can vary widely, often as a result of genetic factors (see our coverage of this sort of “personalized medicine” here), such monitoring can help doctors avoid dangerous overdoses or to switch unresponsive patients to higher doses or different drugs as necessary.
Irvine, Calif.-based Arbor Surgical Technologies, a developer of minimally invasive heart-valve replacement devices, raised another $5.5 million in its third funding round, VentureBeat Life Sciences has learned. The cash came courtesy of the Laguna Fund, a new investor, and Delphi Ventures and Alloy Ventures, which have participated in previous funding rounds.
Arbor said it raised $20 million in the round in late January, so the extension brings that round to a total of $25.5 million. The company’s CEO, Steve Bacich, didn’t return a phone call or an email seeking comment.
Arbor, founded in 2002, is currently conducting European clinical tests of its replacement device for the heart’s aortic valve, which controls the flow of oxygen-rich blood from the left ventricle into the aorta. The valves are made of bovine pericardium, the tough tissue sac that surrounds a cow’s heart.
Many existing aortic-valve replacements require open-heart surgery; Arbor says its device can be implanted in a minimally invasive procedure, although it doesn’t describe the procedure in any of its available public information. The company plans U.S. trials of the device later this year. In January, Arbor licensed manufacturing, marketing and distribution rights to the device to Medtronic in exchange for an equity investment and, most likely, other undisclosed payments.
Of course, no Valentine’s Day would be complete without some messy pictures of heart surgery. I’ve put an Arbor photo comparing the implantation of its device to that of traditional aortic-valve replacements after the jump.
Irvine, Calif.-based Arbor Surgical Technologies, a developer of minimally invasive heart-valve replacement devices, raised another $5.5 million in its third funding round, VentureBeat Life Sciences has learned. The cash came courtesy of the Laguna Fund, a new investor, and Delphi Ventures and Alloy Ventures, which have participated in previous funding rounds.
Arbor said it raised $20 million in the round in late January, so the extension brings that round to a total of $25.5 million. The company’s CEO, Steve Bacich, didn’t return a phone call or an email seeking comment.
Arbor, founded in 2002, is currently conducting European clinical tests of its replacement device for the heart’s aortic valve, which controls the flow of oxygen-rich blood from the left ventricle into the aorta. The valves are made of bovine pericardium, the tough tissue sac that surrounds a cow’s heart.
Many existing aortic-valve replacements require open-heart surgery; Arbor says its device can be implanted in a minimally invasive procedure, although it doesn’t describe the procedure in any of its available public information. The company plans U.S. trials of the device later this year. In January, Arbor licensed manufacturing, marketing and distribution rights to the device to Medtronic in exchange for an equity investment and, most likely, other undisclosed payments.
Of course, no Valentine’s Day would be complete without some messy pictures of heart surgery. I’ve put an Arbor photo comparing the implantation of its device to that of traditional aortic-valve replacements after the jump.
Irvine, Calif.-based Arbor Surgical Technologies, a developer of minimally invasive heart-valve replacement devices, raised another $5.5 million in its third funding round, VentureBeat Life Sciences has learned. The cash came courtesy of the Laguna Fund, a new investor, and Delphi Ventures and Alloy Ventures, which have participated in previous funding rounds.
Arbor said it raised $20 million in the round in late January, so the extension brings that round to a total of $25.5 million. The company’s CEO, Steve Bacich, didn’t return a phone call or an email seeking comment.
Arbor, founded in 2002, is currently conducting European clinical tests of its replacement device for the heart’s aortic valve, which controls the flow of oxygen-rich blood from the left ventricle into the aorta. The valves are made of bovine pericardium, the tough tissue sac that surrounds a cow’s heart.
Many existing aortic-valve replacements require open-heart surgery; Arbor says its device can be implanted in a minimally invasive procedure, although it doesn’t describe the procedure in any of its available public information. The company plans U.S. trials of the device later this year. In January, Arbor licensed manufacturing, marketing and distribution rights to the device to Medtronic in exchange for an equity investment and, most likely, other undisclosed payments.
Of course, no Valentine’s Day would be complete without some messy pictures of heart surgery. I’ve put an Arbor photo comparing the implantation of its device to that of traditional aortic-valve replacements after the jump.
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
- Aptamer-drug maker Archemix withdraws its $72.5 million IPO (Edgar)
- OraMetrix raises $20M for robotic orthodontic systems (peHUB)
- Microarray maker TeleChem goes public via reverse merger (release)
- BioVascular pulls in $11M for platelet-disease treatments (release)
- Cequent Pharma adds $4.5M for for RNAi drugs (VentureWire)
- CareSeek, online medical-rating service, gets $575K, looks for $5M (VentureWire)
- Satiogen takes in $700K for obesity treatment (VentureWire)
- Dilon Tech appoints Robert Moussa as CEO (release)
Aptamer-drug maker Archemix withdraws its $72.5 million IPO – I’ve expanded this news into a standalone item on the state of the life-science IPO market here.
OraMetrix raises $20M for robotic orthodontic systems – Richardson, Tex.-based OraMetrix, a maker of 3-D robotic systems for orthodontic use, raised $20 million in a new funding round, peHUB reports. The financing is either a third round (as peHUB puts it) or a sixth (as VentureWire reports based on an interview with the company’s CFO). Existing investors, including Rho Capital Partners, Versant Ventures, Brentwood Venture Capital and Star Ventures, provided the cash.
Founded in 1998, OraMetrix makes and sells what it calls the SureSmile system for orthodontic braces. After taking a 3-D scan of a patient’s mouth, an orthodontist can then use the system’s computer modeling to develop a treatment plan. A robotic system then precisely bends the “archwires” that push teeth around.
OraMetrix claims the system shortens the duration of treatment and reduces office visits. The company has sold the system since 2004 and told VentureWire that it has installed SureSmile for more than 200 doctors, but says it needs to roughly double that figure to reach profitability.
Microarray maker TeleChem goes public via reverse merger – TeleChem International, a Sunnyvale, Calif., maker of gene-chip microarrays that is also known as ArrayIt, went public via a reverse merger with Integrated Media Holdings. The companies don’t quite call it a reverse merger, but given that IMH shares have traded at around two cents since September, the company has a shareholder’s deficit of $1.5 million and noted in its latest quarterly filing that there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to remain a going concern, the dots aren’t all that hard to connect.
Technically, IMH acquired TeleChem’s existing shares in exchange for 35 million shares of the merged company, which will undergo a one for 30 reverse split. At yesterday’s IMH close of, yes, two cents, that values the deal at about $21 million.
BioVascular pulls in $11M for platelet-disease treatments – San Diego’s BioVascular, a specialty pharma focused on drugs for fighting blood clots related to heart surgery, raised $10.9 million in a third funding round. Investors included BB Biotech Ventures, Merck KGaA and Domain Associates.
The funds will allow BioVascular to complete early-stage trials of two drugs, saratin for the prevention of clotting in grafted vessels following heart-bypass operations, and BVI-007, a platelet-production inhibitor it acquired last year when it bought out the biotech Revitus.
Cequent Pharma adds $4.5M for for RNAi drugs – Cequent Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, Mass., developer of drugs based on the gene-silencing technique called RNA interference, added $4.5 million to its first funding round, VentureWire reports. The new cash, provided by existing investors Novartis Option Fund, Ampersand Ventures, Nexus Medical Partners and Pappas Ventures, brings Cequent’s total funding in the round to $13.5 million.
RNAi involves the use of short stretches of RNA that engage ancient cellular mechanisms for silencing the output of particular disease-related genes. RNA, however, doesn’t enter cells easily, so Cequent is working on a way to use genetically engineered, non-disease-causing bacteria that will enter human cells and produce the desired RNA molecules locally. We covered Cequent’s previous funding here.