Acquisition news from big IT, Web, and biotech names, plus funding announcements for newer tech and life sciences companies, kept us buzzing with deals news in New England this week.
—Watertown, MA-based Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a startup developing gene-silencing drugs, raised $25 million in Series B funding. New investor Domain Associates led the round, which also included Abingworth, Oxford Bioscience Partners, and Skyline Ventures.
—Mercator Therapeutics, a Wellesley, MA-based stealthy biotech startup, raised $2 million in seed funding to put toward licensing its technology and conducting early research in cancer.
—Framingham, MA-based Boston Heart Lab raised $10 million in an offering of equity- and rights-based securities. The startup makes lab tests for measuring patient cholesterol and programs for tracking cardiovascular health.
—Boston TechStars alum Marginize brought in $650,000 in its first round of venture funding. The startup is working on technology that displays the social media buzz surrounding the website you’re viewing. The investors in the financing were Atlas Venture, Longworth Venture Partners, eonBusiness, and SOS Ventures on the venture capital side. Marginize also attracted backing from angel investors David Cohen, Dharmesh Shah, Joe Caruso, Jean Hammond, Bill Warner, Will Herman, and Michael Mark.
—Healthcare payment software maker TransEngen, of Norwalk, CT, pulled in $2.5 million in an equity financing. The company’s website lists Dallas, TX-based Carlson Capital as a board member.
—Waltham, MA-based marketing analytics firm Unica will be acquired by IBM for $480 million in cash, in a deal set to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Big Blue is rolling Unica’s (NASDAQ: [[ticker:UNCA]]) 500 employees into its Software Solutions Group and will move them into its IBM Mass Lab. The computer giant has scooped up other companies in the marketing, e-commerce, and fulfillment spaces, like AT&T’s Sterling Commerce and Coremetrics.
—Stealthy social games startup Ayeah Games raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding, from angel investors and micro VC firms like John Landry of Lead Dog Ventures and Janpieter Scheerder of Eureeka Ventures. Ayeah was started by
