Author: Ryan McBride

Ryan McBride wrote:

Waltham, MA-based Thermo Fisher Scientific has struck a deal to acquire Fermentas International for $260 million in cash, Thermo reports today. Fermentas, based in Burlington, Ontario, makes and sells life sciences research materials such as enzymes and reagents as well as diagnostic tools. The firm, which has 500 employees, had 2009 revenue of $54 million. Thermo (NYSE:TMO) says that Fermentas is expected to become part of its analytical technologies segment.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Logical Therapeutics, a developer of drugs for inflammatory conditions, says that it has closed a $16.9 million in a Series C round of funding, according to a press release. Xconomy reported last week that the Waltham, MA-based firm had raised $10 million of a planned $16.9 million round of financing, based on online records from the SEC. The company did not comment at the time, and it wasn’t clear from the records who invested in the financing. Now Logical says it’s closed on the full amount, and that SV Life Sciences led the round, which included investments from Burrill & Co., Novo A/S, and Novitas Capital.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Both academics and industry have long sought ways to spot cancer in patients before it becomes deadly. This week, Cambridge, MA-based Quanterix said its single-molecule detection system could potentially find signs of prostate cancer recurrence lurking in the blood years before traditional lab tests.

The study, published in Nature Biotechnology, showed that Quanterix’s technology detected proteins in the blood called prostate-specific antigens (PSA) with 1,700-times greater sensitivity than existing diagnostics. The protein is a common biological marker in testing for prostate cancer. Beyond these findings, the company claims that its technology could be used to measure virtually all proteins in the blood that are linked to diseases, some of which are difficult or impossible to quantify with existing antibody-based blood tests.

Quanterix, founded in 2007, has previously garnered plenty of attention from venture capitalists and the science press. David Walt, the Tufts University chemistry professor who invented the startup’s technology, hit pay dirt with his previous company, San Diego-based Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN), which dominates the market for high-speed gene sequencing instruments. With Walt’s new technology, and his track record of success, Quanterix scooped up $15 million in a Series A round of funding in 2008 from big-name investors such as Arch Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, and Flagship Ventures.

Quanterix’s new study refines its pedigree further. The firm’s single-molecule array system found trace amounts of proteins linked to prostate cancer in blood samples from which standard tests for the proteins found nothing, according to the company. All 30 of the samples in the firm’s study were from men who had surgery to remove cancerous prostate tissue, Walt told me in an interview. Men who undergo such surgeries typically get their blood checked for PSAs for years in order to detect whether their prostate cancer has returned, but those existing blood tests have limited sensitivity, and signs that the cancer has come back can go unnoticed for years, until it is too late.

“The Holy Grail would be if we could …Next Page »

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Ryan McBride wrote:

A team of cancer drug veterans has formed a new company in Boston. The company, Tesaro, says today that it has raised $20 million in a Series A round of funding from the investment firm New Enterprise Associates and its founders.

Tesaro says it plans to acquire and develop cancer drugs and other oncology products. New Enterprise Associates, which has U.S. offices in Maryland and Silicon Valley, has led the company’s first-round financing and reserved an additional $40 million to support Tesaro as it progresses over time.

The new company unites former top executives of the Minnesota-based drug company MGI Pharma, which had R&D operations in Lexington, MA. The Japanese pharmaceutical firm Eisai bought MGI in 2008 for $3.9 billion. Mary Lynne Hedley, the co-founder and chief scientist at Tesaro, previously led MGI’s and then Eisai’s research labs in Lexington. She also co-founded Zycos, a Massachusetts-based biotech startup, where she was CEO when MGI bought the firm in 2004 for $50 million.

Hedley was not immediately available this morning for an interview. (Here’s a story I wrote about Hedley a few years ago when she won an award from Mass High Tech.)

Tesaro’s founding team includes CEO Lonnie Moulder, who was chief executive at MGI before the Eisai buyout. Rick Rogers, another former MGI executive, is Tesaro’s financial chief. Before launching their newest cancer drug venture, Moulder, Rogers, and Hedley were executives for the Los Angeles-based cancer drug firm Abraxis Bioscience.

It’s not clear from Tesaro’s website whether it has yet acquired any cancer compounds for clinical development. The firm was just formed in March, so it’s possible that the company hasn’t assembled a pipeline. Now, at least, we know that the firm has the money to go shopping for drug candidates it can develop.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) has won FDA approval to sell its Pompe disease drug alglucosidase alpha (Lumizyme) made in 4,000-liter batches at its plant in Geel, Belgium, the company reported this morning. The FDA approved the drug for treating patients who are at least 8 years old with Pompe, a rare genetic disease that robs people of their ability to make an enzyme that breaks down sugars that build up and enlarge heart and muscle tissues. Genzyme’s drug replaces the lacking enzyme. The disease, which can be fatal, causes symptoms such as lung infections and respiratory failure, according to the National Institutes of Health.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Avila Therapeutics has a new target for its new class of drugs—lung cancer. The Waltham, MA-based biotech startup has clinched a $209 million deal with Clovis Oncology for drugs against mutated tumors in the lungs, according to the companies.

The companies are keeping a tight lid on the details of the deal, including how much cash Clovis is paying Avila upfront versus downstream in the form of potential milestone payments. Avila says that the deal includes an upfront payment, development and sales milestone fees that could total as much as $209 million. The firm also has a shot at making money from royalties on potential sales of drugs that result from its partnership with Clovis.

Boulder, CO-based Clovis is tapping Avila’s technology to combat non-small cell lung cancer that has built resistance to existing treatments such as the anti-tumor pills erlotinib (Tarceva) and gefitinib (Iressa). The Avila approach is thought to be promising against resistance, because its drugs are designed to form irreversible covalent bonds with their targets, making it a lot tougher for tumors to find an escape valve to keep growing. Avila and Clovis are seeking to develop a drug like this that can block a specific a mutation that is that is thought to prevent those existing treatments from binding with proteins that help lung cancer cells grow. Also, Avila could make drugs that target only the growth proteins with the mutation, meaning that healthy tissues where the proteins are present would be spared.

Clovis is funding clinical development and commercialization of Avila’s lung cancer drugs, which are in pre-clinical development. The Colorado company is also paying to develop a diagnostic test that would identify patients with mutated forms of lung cancer who are most likely to benefit from the drug.

Katrine Bosley

Avila’s deal with Clovis builds on its existing research of drugs to combat resistant forms of hepatitis C and immune system malignancies. The firm, founded in 2007, brought in $51 million through two rounds of venture capital funding from Abingworth Management, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Novartis Venture Fund, and Polaris Venture Partners. We’ll have a chance to hear more from Avila CEO Katrine Bosley next month, as she is one of the featured speakers at Xconony’s XSITE business innovation forum at Babson College on June 17.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Constant Contact, the Waltham, MA-based provider of online marketing software for small organizations, says today it has bought NutshellMail for an undisclosed sum. Menlo Park, CA-based Nutshellmail’s software enables small businesses to monitor social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and get the results delivered to their e-mail inboxes, according to Constant Contact (NASDAQ:CTCT). Mark Schmulen and David Lyman, co-founders of NutshellMail, are expected to lead Constant Contact’s planned Bay Area office, which is slated to open later this year.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

It’s been a big two days for LightLab Imaging. Good Morning America featured the Westford, MA, firm’s coronary imaging technology on national television today. And St. Jude Medical, the cardiac devices powerhouse, revealed late yesterday that it has bought the small firm for about $90 million in cash.

St. Paul, MN-based St. Jude (NYSE:STJ) is buying LightLab from Goodman Co., the Japanese medical devices firm that has owned LightLab since 2002. With much of its core technology from MIT, LightLab has developed a so-called optical coherence tomography (OCT) catheter—which uses infrared light to capture detailed images of tissues—to diagnose cardiovascular disease.

The FDA gave the LightLab permission to begin selling the system in the U.S. this month, and St. Jude expects its new acquisition to add $20 million to its revenue stream in second half of this year. Before garnering FDA clearance, LightLab had received permission to sell the system in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and other parts of the world.

In December, Massachusetts officials highlighted LightLab as a source of jobs growth in the state, granting $188,951 in tax incentives to the firm as part of Gov. Deval Patrick’s $1 billion initiative to grow the life sciences sector in the commonwealth. The good news for the state is that St. Jude plans to continue LightLab’s operation in Westford and has no “big layoff plans,” said Amy Nesbit, a spokeswoman for LightLab.

LightLab CEO David Kolstad, in an interview Tuesday unrelated to the buyout, said that the company has committed to adding 29 new workers under the terms of its tax incentives from the state. The company currently employs about 70 people, he said. Nesbit said today that the company plans to apply for another round of state tax incentives this year to support its hiring plans. Kolstad is expected to transition from his chief executive role to a vice president position at St. Jude, she said.

LightLab launched in 1998 to apply some of the OCT discoveries from the labs of MIT professor James Fujimoto and those of his colleagues, including Eric Swanson, to coronary imaging. Fujimoto and Swanson are now technical advisors for the firm, Kolstad says.

St. Jude says it expects to wrap up its buyout of LightLab by the end of June.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Seventh Sense Biosystems wants to remove some of the hassle, expense, and pain of collecting blood for medical tests. The secretive startup has recently begun talks with major healthcare companies about its technology, which includes a device for collecting blood samples that almost anyone ought to be able to use without causing pain, says Doug Levinson, the firm’s co-founder and CEO.

The Cambridge, MA-based firm—which counts among its co-founders two of Boston’s medical technology gurus, R. Rox Anderson of Harvard and Bob Langer of MIT—prides itself on putting sophisticated technology into simple-to-use packages. Levinson, a partner at Flagship Ventures, managed to convince his own venture firm and the startup’s other backers at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, MA, and Boston-based Third Rock Ventures to invest $4.75 million in its Series A round in 2008 to get the operation rolling. The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropic organization, is also supporting infectious disease research at the startup.

Last year at our big XSITE event, Levinson gave us a look at the startup’s unique chemistry that enables polymer particles to reveal certain colors or form into defined shapes when they come into contact with specific molecules in the blood or other bodily fluids. The technology opens the door to potential uses in the diagnostics field such as monitoring drug dosage levels or spotting infection. Yet Levinson was less clear last year how a patient’s blood would be tapped to enable the startup’s chemical invention to alert patients of certain health conditions.

Enter the startup’s TAP (touch activated phlebotomy) device, which is in development. With the push of a button, the system …Next Page »

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Arsenal Medical, a stealthy biotech startup based in Watertown, MA, has tapped its existing base of investors to pump in another $10 million in the second installment of its Series C round of funding, R. Scott Rader, the company’s CEO, says. The financing, which was initially revealed in an SEC filing that went online yesterday, brings the firm’s third round to $18.2 million.

Investors in the latest round included North Bridge Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners, both of Waltham, MA, as well as Durham, NC-based Intersouth Partners, Rader says. The developer of bioactive materials has raised nearly $41 million since its launch, the CEO says. He declined to discuss the specific purpose of the latest financing.

Arsenal has generated buzz for its big-name founders, most notably Bob Langer, the MIT inventor of acclaimed drug-delivery technologies, and the standout Harvard chemist and Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) co-founder George Whitesides. Jeff Carbeck, Arsenal’s co-founder and former chief technology officer, provided a few details about the firm’s technology last year. Carbeck says that Arsenal’s chairman and co-founder, Carmichael Roberts, recruited him to help build the startup. Roberts is a partner at North Bridge and a former member of Whitesides’s lab at Harvard.

Arsenal (formerly WMR Biomedical)  provides additional information about its “bioactive composites” on its website. It highlights its “ElastaCore” biomaterial, which can provide some of the strength of metal while still allowing the body to absorb it. Also, the firm touts its “AxioCore” technology, which is another absorbable material that is designed to provide controlled release of drugs.

Rader says that the company might shed more light on its technology in the near future.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Cytogel Pharma, a Darien, CT-based biopharmaceutical development firm, has raised $2.2 million in equity and rights funding, according to an SEC filing. The company, founded in 2002, says that its strategy is to license promising drugs with the intent of eventually selling them to larger companies, according to its website. Centripetal Capital Partners, based in Stamford, CT, lists Cytogel among its portfolio companies.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

When celebrity Regis Philbin talked up the benefits of Zeo’s sleep tracking device on his TV show last June, the Newton, MA-based startup sold more than 1,000 units within three days, says Dave Dickinson, the firm’s CEO.

Zeo, founded as Axon Labs in 2003 by three Brown University students, is nearly a year into marketing a system for consumers that detects brain waves to record the length and quality of their sleep. Sleep-deprived journalists like The New York Times‘ David Pogue gobbled up the story last year, sending early adopters to what was the only place to buy Zeo’s Personal Sleep Coach, the Internet. Yet the firm faces the same hurdles that have tripped other consumer tech makers trying to navigate between an initial publicity bump and commercial success.

This month Zeo’s first infomercials aired, providing the startup a new means of enticing the masses to buy. In June, the firm plans to release its first iPhone app, which gives users of the system a new way to view their sleep data. (Users are already able to upload their sleep information to their personal accounts on the firm’s website.) The jury is still out, however, about whether the product is destined for lasting stardom. Dickinson says that so far the company has sold thousands of its products, but he and other executives refused to provide exact sales figures.

Colin Angle, co-founder and CEO of iRobot, has been advising the team at Zeo since 2005 and is a director of the startup. Angle came to the aid of Zeo in 2005 after his Burlington, MA-based robotics firm had made millions of dollars with the Roomba, a robotic vacuum cleaner for the consumer market. He says that the adoption of Zeo’s product hasn’t been …Next Page »

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Helicos BioSciences, a Cambridge, MA-based developer of genetic analysis technology, says it has cut 40 jobs or half its remaining work force this month to trim its operating expenses. The company (NASDAQ:HLCS) wants to apply its single-molecule gene sequencing technology in the molecular diagnostics field, after life sciences researchers have been slow to adopt the technology for DNA-sequencing studies. The firm had $11.3 million in the bank as of March 31, and it needs to raise “significant additional capital” before the end of June to fund its operations for another year, the firm said in a quarterly financial statement filed yesterday with the SEC. In February, Steve Lombardi resigned from his post as president of the cash-strapped company.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Cambridge Endoscopic Devices, a developer of laparoscopic instruments, has raised $3 million of a $7.5 million round of equity funding, according to an SEC filing. The filing says there was one investor in the round, but the filing does not identify the name of the investor. The Framingham, MA-based company, formed in 2004, has developed a hand-held endoscope with a distal tip that a surgeon can rotate at any angle, according to the company’s website. The firm’s products are designed for minimally invasive procedures.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

Stemgent, a provider of consumable research materials for stem cell scientists, has raised $5.6 million of a planned $10.1 million round of equity funding, according to an SEC filing. The funding includes the conversion of promissory notes. The company, which has offices in Cambridge, MA, and San Diego, previously raised $14 million in March 2009 from HealthCare Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.

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Ryan McBride wrote:

There’s perhaps no better place in the Boston area to talk about the future use of information technology in healthcare than the modern building in Kendall Square that houses the MIT Media Lab. The abundant windows and glass interior walls allow natural light to spill onto researchers as they advance new technologies to transform healthcare. Visitors can see across the Charles River to renowned medical care facilities like Massachusetts General Hospital, and in every other direction they can see the largest cluster of biotech research institutions on the East Coast.

It was a great setting for “Healthcare In Transition,” Xconomy’s first forum solely focused on the convergence of information technology and healthcare. Frank Moss, director of the Media Lab, entertained the audience  with a clip from an old “Saturday Night Live” skit that satirizes the backward medical practices of the Middle Ages, when bloodletting was thought to be a panacea for all manner of ailments. Moss’s use of the clip underscored his point that patients, not doctors, need to be the agents of change in the broken healthcare system. Then John Moore, a physician and researcher at the Media Lab, gave us a look at several technologies—including artificial caregivers that talk to patients, a touch-screen interface to foster collaboration between patients and doctors, and a device for patients to use in their homes to communicate with caregivers—which are meant to put patients in better control of their healthcare.

Our presenters dazzled with their inventions to solve problems in healthcare. And there are plenty of problems: the $2.5 trillion dollars spent on healthcare in the U.S. last year accounted for nearly 20 percent of our country’s gross domestic product (GDP), and there is no sign that the gargantuan costs will level off. In the midst of this morass are people who are treating their bodies like dumpsters and taking no responsibility for the expensive results, doctors whose interests are to see lots of these sick people rather than spend more time to keep them healthy, and health insurance outfits that are profiting from the general disarray in this system. Still, the raft of bugaboos in healthcare has given rise to new companies and ideas bent on putting out these fires. And we tried to feature as many of them as we could on Monday.

“We’re headed for disaster,” Moss said. “We have to look at a …Next Page »

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