Pervasis, Flagship, SeventhSense, & More Boston Life Sciences Newsmakers

We saw some investments this week in New England regenerative medicine, diagnostics, and medical devices companies.

—Cambridge, MA-based Flagship Ventures formed a new partnership with Merck Research Ventures Fund to find and finance companies developing drugs for unmet medical needs. The $250 million Merck fund was established last fall and has so far made four other fund-to-fund investments.

—The Irish pharmaceutical company Shire acquired the assets of Cambridge-based regenerative medicine startup Pervasis Therapeutics for an undisclosed upfront payment, and milestones that could reach $200 million. Pervasis is developing a product for improving blood vessel access in hemodialysis patients.

—Filings with the SEC this week show a couple of area companies have raised some new cash. Pittsfield, MA-based Nuclea Biotechnologies, a developer of cancer diagnostics technology, nabbed $1.9 million in equity- and options-based funding from 15 investors. And Seventh Sense Biosystems, a maker of devices for collecting blood samples, pulled in $750,000 in a debt and rights offering from five backers.

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.