Battery Ventures Backs ExactTarget, $22M for Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Ironwood Banks $40M in European Deal, & Much Much More Boston-Area Deals News

Sheesh there were a lot of deals last week! Let’s get to it.

Ironwood Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, MA, earned $40 million in upfront payments as part of a deal giving Barcelona, Spain-based Laboratorios Almirall European development and commercial rights to linaclotide, Ironwood’s experimental drug for irritable bowel syndrome with constipation. The Spanish firm will potentially pay Ironwood another $15 million for reaching near-term milestones, plus $40 million before linaclotide is commercialized.

—Burlington, VT-based Vermedx raised $500,000 in a Series A financing to help develop information technology tools for the diabetes care market. Shelburne, VT-based FreshTracks Capital led the deal.

—Waltham, MA-based diagnostics maker Inverness Medical Innovations (NYSE:[[ticker:IMA]]) announced a $200 million public offering of senior subordinated notes due in 2016.

—Providence, RI-based NABsys, a startup developing fast, cheap DNA sequencing technology for use in healthcare, raised $4 million in a Series A financing round led by Point Judith Capital and joined by the likes of the Slater Technology Fund.

—Medical devices firm Arsenal Medical of Watertown, MA, reportedly raised $8.2 million in a third round of venture financing. The company, which was formerly called WMR Biomedical, is developing devices incorporating advanced biomaterials for the cardiovascular and ophthalmology markets.

—Acton, MA-based Azuki Systems (formerly called PeerMeta—I guess local startups are in the mood for change) raised $6 million in equity financing from previous backers Kepha Partners and Sigma Partners, as well as company executives. Azuki provides a cloud-based platform for mobile websites, mobile applications, and desktop widgets.

Synageva BioPharma of Waltham, MA, collected $3 million more of a previously announced private equity round, bringing the total

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.