The birth and death of partnerships was the subject of much of this week’s news in New England’s life sciences sector.
—Rhythmia Medical raised $5 million in an equity offering that could end up being worth $7 million, according to a regulatory filing, bringing the Burlington, MA-based startup’s total funding to $17 million. Rhythmia is developing a catheter-based device that creates a 3D map of the heart in order to pinpoint the tissues responsible for irregular heartbeats.
—Cambridge, MA-based DecImmune Therapeutics raised $1 million in an equity-based financing round led by Astellas Venture Management and joined by return investors Amgen and HealthCare Ventures. DecImmune, a Harvard Medical School spinoff out to develop drugs that reduce inflammation and tissue damage, also won a $2.2 million Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health.
—Diagnostics maker PointCare Technologies of Marlborough, MA, raised $1.8 million of a planned $3.5 million equity round of funding, according to an SEC filing. PointCare’s products are designed to help patients with HIV/AIDS in developing countries.
—Ryan checked in with John Knopf, CEO and co-founder of Cambridge, MA-based Acceleron Pharma, a developer of drugs that treat disease by boosting or inhibiting the growth of particular tissues. With a newly inked deal with Ireland’s Shire in its pocket, along with other pharma partnerships, “Our hope is that we won’t have to go back to our venture backers,” Knopf said.
—Superstar cancer researcher Tyler Jacks, the director of MIT’s David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, signed up to
