We saw a number of lesser-known New England-area biotechs surface with funding announcements, as well as feature stories looking at company strategies and drug development trends.
—Inverness Medical Innovations, a Waltham, MA-based maker of consumer diagnostic tests and disease management tools, announced it had changed its name to Alere, and shifted its stock symbol on the NYSE from “IMA” to “ALR.”
—Brighton, MA-based drugmaker Surface Logix raised $4 million of a round of equity, options, and warrants that could total $4.6 million. The startup is working on treatments for obesity and diabetes, and was founded with technology from Harvard chemist George Whitesides in 2001.
—-Lexington, MA-based Taris Biomedical, a spinoff company from MIT making a drug-device combination treatment for bladder conditions, announced it had hired Sarma Duddu as its president and CEO. Duddu comes from Cima Labs, a subsidiary of the Frazer, PA-based drugmaker Cephalon (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CEPH]]).
—Ryan took a look at Cambridge, MA-based Stromedix, a biotech company that is developing drugs to target the process, called fibrosis, that causes patient’s bodies to reject transplanted kidneys. The drug, STX-100, is licensed from Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BIIB]]), and was originally projected to hit a mid-stage clinical trial by this point, but has been delayed a bit. Stromedix CEO Michael Gilman told Ryan he expects the FDA will let the kidney fibrosis study advance next year, and the firm has already gotten the regulatory green-light to begin mid-stage clinical trials of its treatment for a lung disease called ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
—DiagnosisONE, a Nashua NH-based provider of software for clinical-decision support, raised $5 million from Edison Venture Fund, to put
