There were good, bad, and ugly deals in New England’s technology and life sciences sectors this past week. Yet there are more highlights and lowlights. You can judge under which of those three categories (good, bad, ugly) the following deals fall:
—Wade did some digging in the SEC database last Friday to report that Cambridge, MA-based industrial robotics firm Heartland Robotics, founded by MIT computer science guru and iRobot (NASDAQ:[[ticker:IRBT]]) cofounder Rod Brooks, raised $7 million in equity capital. Our intrepid senior correspondent also confirmed that Bezos Expeditions, which manages the personal investments of Amazon (NASDAQ:[[ticker:AMZN]]) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, took part in the round.
—Cambridge-based Gloucester Pharmaceuticals reeled in $29 million in a Series D round of venture capital financing from previous backers and new investor Novo A/S, Luke reported. The money comes as the cancer drug developer prepares to make its case for approval of its first drug, romidepsin—which has been developed to treat a rare form of blood cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma—to an FDA advisory committee at a meeting slated for next week.
—Cambridge blood replacement maker Biopure took another step into the grave last week, completing a bankruptcy auction that saw its business assets go to OPK Biotech for $4 million. We also learned from online business journal MassDevice that the owner of OPK is a Russian