by Bessemer Venture Partners. Alnara is pursuing a unique set of biotech drugs that can be taken orally and can act strictly in the digestive tract, avoiding injections and potential side effects.
—Cambridge, MA-based Dyax (NASDAQ:[[ticker:DYAX]]) worked out a deal with investment fund Azimuth Opportunity to sell up to $50 million of its common stock to Azimuth over an 18-month period.
—Ryan chatted with Lauren Silverman, the managing director of the confusingly named (and Cambridge, MA-based) Novartis Option Fund. Silverman explained that the fund is really a general venture capital fund that happens to have a single limited partner—Swiss drug giant Novartis (NYSE:[[ticker:NVS]]—and that the startups in which it invests between $20 million and $25 million need not be “on strategy with Novartis.” Ryan rounds up the five startups that have benefited from this unusual fund to date.
—Luke provided a blow-by-blow analysis of the data on Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ hepatitis C drug, telaprevir, coming out of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease annual meeting in San Francisco. Bottom line: the Cambridge, MA-based firm’s lead candidate is continuing to live up to high expectations.
—Ryan told the fascinating story of Boston’s RA Capital Management, a young hedge fund with a stellar record in life sciences investing. Of note: the fund’s lead portfolio manager, Peter Kolchinsky, took the post fresh out of a Harvard Ph.D. program.
—Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BIIB]]) inked a deal with Genentech under which it will pay $31.5 million upfront to co-develop a next-generation antibody drug called GA101 that’s in Phase I/II trials as a cancer treatment.
—Genzyme (NASDAQ:[[ticker:GENZ]]) of Cambridge, MA, forged a deal worth potentially more than $1 billion with Columbia, MD-based Osiris Therapeutics (NASDAQ:[[ticker:OSIR]]) to develop and commercialize two adult stem cell treatments in a variety of diseases. Genzyme will pay $130 million up front and up to $1.25 billion in milestone payments to commercialize Prochymal and Chondrogen in markets outside the U.S. and Canada.
—Watertown, MA-based biotech firm Acusphere (NASDAQ:[[ticker:ACUS]]) forged a deal giving Frazer, PA-based Cephalon (NASDAQ:[[ticker:CEPH]]) an exclusive worldwide license on its injectable formulation of anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib, which is in preclinical development. Acusphere got a $5 million initial fee and $15 million in loans in return.
