AT&T Goes Shopping in MA, Adobe Does Same, Memsic Files for an IPO, and More

What better way to spend a holiday Monday than catching up on last week’s news? Here are the highlights:

—In acquisition news, AT&T announced it had reached an agreement to acquire Cambridge, MA-based Interwise for roughly $121 million in cash. Interwise offers voice, Web, and video conferencing services on a fixed price/unlimited usage basis. The deal is slated to close in the fourth quarter. Adobe Systems, meanwhile, said it’s going to acquire Waltham, MA’s Virtual Ubiquity, which produces an online word processor called Buzzword, by the end of November.

–Andover, MA-based Memsic, which makes sensors using MEMS technology, filed for an IPO worth up to $100 million. The firm, whose investors include the Still River Fund, Celtic House Venture Partners, and InveStar Capital, plans to trade on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol MEMS.

—Cambridge’s WMR Biomedical—one of several companies cofounded by Xconomists George Whitesides and Carmichael Roberts—closed a $13.1 million Series B round from Intersouth Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and others, Dan Primack reports.

—EnerNOC (NASDAQ: ENOC), the Boston-based energy demand aggregator, announced it has signed a five-year agreement with Southern California Edison, that will ultimately ramp up to 160 MW of load reduction. Financial terms of the deal were not announced.

—Aveo Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, MA cancer-drug firm, announced a collaboration with Melville, NY’s OSI Pharmaceuticals. Under the agreement, OSI will pay AVEO $10 million in cash, and will purchase roughly $5 million worth of equity in the Cambridge firm. Aveo also announced, without disclosing financial details, an agreement with Australia’s Peptech that will give Aveo access to Peptech’s technology for making antibodies generated in animals more human-like.

—Biotech giant Genzyme of Cambridge, MA, won approval in Japan for Elaprase, an enzyme treatment for a rare genetic disease called Hunter syndrome. U.S. drug regulators were not as kind to the firm: The FDA posted on its website a warning letter to Genzyme outlining what the agency says are deviations from manufacturing standards at a plant in France that produces Genzyme’s Thymoglobulin, an anti-rejection treatment for transplant recipients.

Author: Rebecca Zacks

Rebecca is Xconomy's co-founder. She was previously the managing editor of Physician's First Watch, a daily e-newsletter from the publishers of New England Journal of Medicine. Before helping launch First Watch, she spent a decade covering innovation for Technology Review, Scientific American, and Discover Magazine's TV show. In 2005-2006 she was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rebecca holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Brown University and a master's in science journalism from Boston University.