Proteostasis Rakes in $45M in Series A

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Um. Wow. $45M?
Proteostasis announced that it has secured $45 million in a Series A financing to develop drugs as novel therapies to treat multiple genetic and degenerative disorders associated with protein homeostasis deficiencies. Investors included HealthCare Ventures, Fidelity Biosciences, New Enterprise Associates, Novartis Option Fund and Genzyme Ventures.
On paper, this company smells [...]

Heathcare / Medical Venture Capital Groups

I’ve compiled a list of relevant healthcare / biotech / med device / pharma VC groups.
Enjoy.

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Weekly Biopharm Financing: Cardiome, Genomic Vision, RF Surgical, NuPathe, Cell and Cara Tharapeutics

NuPathe (Business Wire)
Raised $30 million in a Series B, private stock sale. They will mainly use the funds to support the phase 3 trial of their sumatriptan patch for migraine but some money will get funneled into their Parkinson’s
Cardiome (PRNewswire)
Under the non-brokered private placement, Cardiome has entered into an agreement to sell 2,272,727 Series [...]

CoLucid Rakes in $25M for Migraine Treatment

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CoLucid announced it closed a $25M series B financing. The main phase 2, development compound is COL-144 (5-HT1F agonist for the treatment of migraine), a drug they in-licensed from Eli Lilly after it completed phase 1 trials.
While the $25M series B headline immediately caught my eye, it didn’t take much more reading [...]

Immune Design Nets $18M in Series A

 
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Immune Design is the latest company to try and ride the adaptive immune response wave.  Their approach is to create vaccines that: “use novel adjuvants and target dendritic cells.”  Well, that’s instructive.  The fledgling company has three employees and has just raised a hefty $18M in series A funding from Alta Partners, The Column Group [...]

Funding Roundup: Genfit, Microchip Biotech and Xlumena

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Hot start to the week on the funding side and on the thermometer (as I write this, it’s closing in on 101F in Boston).
XLumena raises $6.15M for endoscopic devices (VentureWire)
Microchip Biotechnologies, Inc. Nears $15M in New Funding (BioSpace)
GENFIT Secures €7.1 Million Funding from Oseo (BioSpace)

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Novartis Buys Protez For Superbug Defense

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Novartis AG strengthened its specialty medicines development portfolio by buying the private, Protez Pharmaceuticals, today for $100M upfront and the potential for up to $400M dependent on meeting certain developmental milestones.
PZ-601, the lead compound, is a broad-spectrum beta-lactam, for the potential treatment of bacterial infections including complicated skin and skin structure infections (cSSSI) [...]

Funding Roundup: IRX, Genesis, Inimex, VeraLight and ONCODESIGN

Busy day on the funding side today. Too many to keep up with and I’m pretty sure I missed a couple but, no time for whining:

ONCODESIGN Secures 4.7M in Financing
VeraLight secures $20 million series C financing for a non-invasive diabetes screening system
IRX therapeutics completes $25 million series A preferred stock offering to continue clinical development [...]

NanoHorizons Wins Second Funding Round

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NanoHorizons announced that it has raised approximately $6.7 million in a second round of funding from Penn Venture Partners, L.P., Life Sciences Greenhouse of Central Pennsylvania, and a bunch of other private investors. Half of the investments have been funded, with the remainder to be funded (subject to attaining certain milestones) within one [...]

Kythera Bags $40M in Series C

The California based, Kythera Biopharmaceuticals announced a $40M C round financing led by JAFCO. The money is structured such that Kythera has an immediate influx of $30M, with the additional $10M available mid-09. Other new investors include BBT Capital Management/Apothecary Capital and PFM.
“This financing is a clear recognition of the progress made on [...]

Icahn Steals The Future of Enzon Pharmaceuticals

Enzon Pharmaceuticals, on the reported urging of uber-investor Carl Icahn, will spin off a NewCo along with the majority of the company’s core technology (PEGylation), their entire published preclinical pipeline (i.e.; their RNA antagonist oncology portfolio) and $150m of funding from Enzon. Not a bad way to start a company, right?
Maybe I’m way off [...]

Does the Esperion Spin-Off Signal the Start of New R&D Era?

What a difference time makes.  Pfizer acquired Esperion roughly 4 years ago at a 53% premium and a price tag of $1.3 billion dollars.  Yesterday, Esperion was spun off from Pfizer and raised ~$23m from VCs to continue operation, with no other financial terms disclosed.  Esperion had been operating as a separate research division inside [...]

Financing for Concert Pharmaceuticals

CoNCERT Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Raises $37 Million in Series C Financing
CoNCERT Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced the closing of a $37 million Series C financing today. The Company intends to use the proceeds to further advance its deuterium chemistry platform and product pipeline. The financing was led by a leading public equity institutional investor and included participation [...]

Financing for Nuon, Constellation and Neurologix

Nuon Therapeutics Inc. Completes $27 Million Series B Financing
The Series B funding will enable Nuon Therapeutics to advance its orally active lead compound, tranilast, through Phase II clinical trials and support the discovery and development of additional compounds. In 2007, [...]

Biopharm Financing Roundup

MethylGene and Otsuka partner on a discovery deal to discover novel kinase inhibitors for eye related diseases with MethylGene receiving $2M upfront and almost another $2M in research funding over 18 months. The total value of the deal including possible regulatory milestones is $50.5M.
Avanir (AVNX) raised $40M in a public offering for cash to [...]