$24 million if Euthymics hits certain milestones with its drugs.
—Customer service software provider Interactions, of Franklin, MA, said it had nailed down a $6.3 million Series D round of funding, with backing from Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, North Hill Ventures, Sigma Partners, and Updata Partners.
—Picis, a Wakefield, MA-based maker of Web-based hospital software, agreed to be acquired by Eden Prairie, MN-based Ingenix, a healthcare intelligence and analytics firm. Picis didn’t reveal the financial details of the acquisition, but said it will retain its presence in Wakefield, as well as its other sites throughout the U.S. and Europe.
—Speculation swirled that drug giant Sanofi-Aventis was out to acquire Cambridge biotech Genzyme, which has faced shareholder scrutiny in the last year largely due to manufacturing woes at its Allston, MA, plant. Genzyme investors reacted energetically to the news on Friday, driving stock price up 15 percent to close at $62.52, and trading at five times the normal volume, Luke reported. Ryan asked Xconomy readers to chime in on how much they think Genzyme would be worth in a buyout.
—Vlingo, a Cambridge-based voice-to-text software developer, announced it had purchased several patents in an intellectual property deal with Intellectual Ventures, of Bellevue, WA. The startup was hit with a patent infringement lawsuit in 2008 from Burlington, MA-based speech software giant Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NUAN]]), but Nuance would need access to the patents Vlingo purchased to continue shipping many of its products, Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan told me. His hope is that Nuance will drop the suit in exchange for a business settlement, where each company would gain access to the other’s patents.
