partners as interim executives for Eleven. The company is looking to engineer proteins for treating autoimmune diseases and blood clotting disorders.
—Seventh Sense Biosystems of Cambridge raised a $4.75 million Series A round in late 2008 from Flagship, Third Rock, and Polaris Venture Partners, putting the VentureLabs startup on the map. Flagship partner Doug Levinson is CEO and co-founder of the company, which is developing a device for the less painful collection of blood samples.
—Cambridge-based T2 Biosystems has raised about $31 million from Flagship and other investors to put toward its development of a portable diagnostic machine that aims to identify a range of biological substances, such as proteins, small molecules, viruses, and DNA—better, more quickly, and more cheaply than existing lab instruments.
—Helicos Biosciences got its start in 2003 and went public in 2007. The firm has had a rocky past few years. It was delisted from the NASDAQ last November because it was unable to meet listing requirements, “due to the state of its finances and near-term business prospects.” The Cambridge-based developer of gene sequencing instruments has also filed lawsuits against Menlo Park, CA-based Pacific Biosciences, San Diego-based Illumina, and Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies for patent infringement.
—Selventa (formerly named Genstruct) is developing computational methods for matching patients with the drugs best suited to them.
—Waltham-based BG Medicine (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BGMD]]) went public at $7 per share earlier this month, in its second attempt at an IPO. The diagnostics company started at VentureLabs in 2000, and last year won FDA approval for its test for measuring the progress of patients with chronic heart failure.
