An acquisition and startup financings made up the New England deals news this week.

—Waltham, MA-based marketing software firm Constant Contact acquired the Boston startup CardStar, the developer of a mobile app for customer loyalty and rewards programs. The deal, whose terms were undisclosed, enables Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT) to expand its marketing offerings for small businesses.

—My colleague Greg rounded up the top 10 venture deals in the Boston area from the fourth quarter of 2011. Rapid7, Warp Drive Bio, and Agios Pharmaceuticals were at the top.

—Hewlett-Packard has spent more than $10 million to set up a new office near the Alewife train station in Cambridge, MA. The office serves as the new headquarters for Vertica, the big data company HP acquired last winter (previously based in Billerica). The new facility will also serve as a center for technology development and local outreach.

—Bluefin Labs, a Cambridge-based startup focused on understanding social media conversation surrounding TV, nabbed $12 million in Series B financing. The deal was led by Time Warner Investments, and included new investor SoftBank Capital and return backers Redpoint Ventures and Lerer Ventures. Bluefins says it will put the money toward sales and client services, as well as its social analytics technology and further R&D.

—Mevion Medical Systems, a radiation therapy company based in Littleton, MA, announced it had pulled in $45 million in funding from ProQuest Investments and existing investors Caxton Heath Life Sciences, Venrock, and CHL Medical Partners. The money will go toward development of its proton beam radiation therapy system, which is designed to be smaller and less expensive than existing X-ray radiation therapy devices.

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Best Buy is looking to a local IT services firm to spruce up its business, announcing today that it is acquiring Waltham, MA-based MindShift Technologies for $167 million. The deal gives Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) more power behind its services offering as the company faces competition in its retail operation from online sources like Amazon.

MindShift, founded in 1999, is the leading managed service provider for small and mid sized businesses in the U.S. (an estimated $40 billion market, according to Best Buy). It offers cloud, data center, and other IT services to businesses for a monthly fee and has more than 5,400 business customers.

The acquisition by Best Buy resembles the retailer’s 2002 acquisition of Geek Squad, the provider of computer repair and maintenance services. MindShift will keep its company name, management team, and 500 employees spread across Massachusetts, New York, Minneapolis, North Carolina, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., according to today’s release.

“There’s no question that acquiring the skills, capabilities and clients of mindSHIFT has the potential to help expand Best Buy’s global services capabilities in the vast small and mid-sized business market,” said George Sherman, senior vice president of Best Buy Services, said in the announcement.  “As important, the mindSHIFT team will bring added experience, talent and resources to the remote support capability we have been building within our multi-channel tech service unit Geek Squad.”

MindShift most recently raised $18 million in venture funding and has the backing of investors such as TD Fund, Volition Capital, and Columbia Capital. The acquisition is expected to close around the end of the calendar year, subject to customary closing conditions.

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New York’s interclick (NASDAQ: ICLK), an advertising technology company, agreed to be acquired by Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) for $270 million in cash, according to a press statement on Tuesday.

Five-year-old interclick developed a platform to help advertisers process large volumes of data from multiple sources to better understand and target their audiences with online display and video ad campaigns. According to an interclick spokesperson, the company’s management will remain onboard after the acquisition is complete. Yahoo is offering $9 cash per share for all outstanding shares of interclick. The deal is expected to close by early 2012.

The acquisition by Yahoo is a bit of a coup for interclick, which is rapidly making a name for itself in the online advertising sector. In October, comScore said interclick ranked No. 16 among ad-focused Web properties in the U.S. for the previous month. Yahoo Network Plus was No. 2 behind Google Ad Network in the same ranking.

Interclick has been growing quickly on its own. In an earnings statement released in August, interclick estimated its 2011 revenue would be about $142 million, up from its previous guidance of $140 million. Interclick reported a profit of $4 million on revenue of $101.2 million for 2010, up from a profit of $502,000 on revenue of $55.3 million in 2009.

Though its technology whetted Yahoo’s appetite, interclick has had to defend some of its practices in court. In August, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed, with prejudice, several claims against interclick that alleged the company’s online advertising practices violated a variety of state and federal laws. Last December, Sonal Bose filed a lawsuit, which included claims of privacy violation, against interclick and sought class action status. Bose alleged interclick monitored her Web browsing and misappropriated personal information via code within online advertisements; however, she dropped the privacy violation claim in March.

Michael Katz, CEO of interclick, said in a statement, “We have said from the beginning, interclick has always taken consumer privacy very seriously and these claims were brought without merit.”

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This week’s deals news in New England was dominated by cleantech and life sciences firms.

—Quincy, MA-based Bluefin Robotics, a maker of  autonomous underwater vehicles, acquired the assets of Hawkes Remotes for an undisclosed sum. Hawkes Remotes is a spinoff of Hawkes Ocean Technologies, a Bay Area developer of deep-ocean explorer vehicles.

—Providence, MA-based NABsys, a developer of gene-sequencing technology, raised $10 million in a Series C financing led by its return investor Stata Venture Partners. That brings NABsys’ total funding pot to $21 million. The startup said it will put the money toward developing and commercializing its solid-state electronic systems for single-molecule DNA sequencing and analysis.

—Mascoma, a Lebanon, NH-based biofuels developer, filed for a potential $100 million initial public offering, which is being underwritten by Morgan Stanley, UBS Investment Bank, and Credit Suisse. As of fall 2009, the company had raised $100 million in private equity and about another $100 million in government grants and loans.

—Massachusetts startups collected $156.5 million in equity-based funding in August, continuing to dip from the dollars raised in earlier months of the summer, according to data from CB Insights Funding Flash.

—My hunch is that this month’s Bay State funding numbers will turn out better; Westborough, MA-based cleantech startup Boston-Power announced Tuesday that it had raised $125 million in funding, led by Beijing firm GSR Ventures. Return Boston-Power backers Oak Investment Partners and Foundation Asset Management also provided funding, along with the Chinese government. As a result, the developer of lithium-ion battery technology will shift its operations and manufacturing to China. Boston-Power has now raised more than $316 million.

—Cambridge, MA-based Tokai Pharmaceuticals took in a $23 million third tranche of its Series D round from existing investors Novartis Venture Fund, Apple Tree Partners, and angel investors. The money will go to Tokai’s prostate cancer drug galeterone (TOK-001), as it moves into the second of three clinical trial phases needed for FDA approval.

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This week we’ve seen financing news for a mix of New England IT and life sciences startups.

—Massachusetts startups raised $250.5 million across 34 deals in July, down from about $564.7 million the month before. The July drop in funding is a pattern we’ve observed before, thanks to data from our partner CB Insights, provider of FundingFlash, a daily roundup of companies receiving venture capital, angel investment, and growth equity funding.

—Cambridge, MA-based marketing tech firm HubSpot bought also Cambridge-based Oneforty for an undisclosed sum, scooping up the Oneforty team and bringing the merged company’s head count to 285 employees. Oneforty provides social media marketing tools and a directory of social media apps.

—Hopper, a Montreal-based travel startup looking for office space in Cambridge for the fall, announced it pinned down an $8 million funding round led by Atlas Venture with participation from Brightspark Ventures.

—Natick, MA-based cloud data storage provider TwinStrata nabbed $5.7 million in equity funding from 27 investors. The financing could hit $8.7 million, according to an SEC document.

—Two Cambridge diagnostics technology startups raised money this week. Quanterix—previously funded by Bain Capital Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, and Flagship Ventures—raised $6 million in new equity financing. And Foundation Medicine, a provider of cancer genomics testing, pinned down about half of an equity round that could hit $20.5 million.

—Our VentureDeal feed pulled another slew of New England financing headlines: $1 million for Newton, MA-based TenMarks, $500,000 for Boston-based Nyx Devices, $3 million for Pittsfield, MA-based Nuclea Biotechnologies, $7 million for Lebanon, NH-based Mascoma, and $1.5 million for Glastonbury, CT-based PayVeris.

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[Updated 2:40 pm Pacific] This week of acquisitions in Seattle tech is going out with a bang. Taiwan-based mobile device maker HTC announced early Friday that it is buying Seattle mobile data-syncing startup Dashwire for as much as $18.5 million, making the smaller company a wholly owned subsidiary through its American unit.

Dashwire’s products synchronize and back up data from smartphones and other mobile devices to the Web. The company has been around since 2006 and has about two dozen employees. Founder and CEO Ford Davidson reports via email that Dashwire will stay in place: “We’ll be continuing to build out our team here in Seattle, where HTC already has its primary North America presence.”

Investors in Dashwire include ubiquitous Seattle angel Geoff Entress, electronics retailer Best Buy, and Trilogy Partners, the venture firm started by wireless-industry veteran and current Clearwire interim CEO John Stanton. Davidson, a former Microsoftie, said in a news release that Dashwire is excited to be “joining the HTC family to drive even more innovation in this space.”

[Adds clarification on HTC and IV] As we reported in April, Dashwire has a license with Intellectual Ventures to use the patent clearinghouse’s intellectual property for defensive purposes. That was related to Dashwire being sued in federal court by Synchronoss (NASDAQ: SNCR), a New Jersey-based company that provides some similar services. The Wall Street Journal speculated that the IV licensing might be one driver in HTC’s decision to buy Dashwire, but that theory was punctured later Friday by IV, which notes that HTC already has a licensing deal with the Bellevue, WA-based intellectual property firm dating back to last year.

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Woburn, MA-based LogMeIn (NASDAQ: LOGM), a maker of software for remote access on Internet-connected devices, said today it acquired Pachube in a $15 million cash deal. Pachube (pronounced Patch Bay) offers a Web service for connecting sensor-enabled devices and sharing data among that network. The acquisition is designed to strengthen LogMeIn’s connectivity and data sharing platforms, and expand its service to devices beyond computers, smartphones, and tablets.

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EBay’s $135 million acquisition of the mobile startup Where took the spotlight this week, but we also saw headlines of financings for New England-area firms in the IT, cleantech, and life sciences spaces.

—Cambridge, MA-based Bluebird Bio pulled in $30 million in Series C financing from new investor ARCH Venture Partners and existing backers Third Rock Ventures, TVM Capital, Forbion Capital Partners, and Easton Capital Investment Group. The company is working on gene therapies and will use the new funding to increase enrollment in an ongoing Phase I/II trial of its drug for the blood disorder beta-thalassemia over the next 12 months to about 10 patients.

—Where, a developer of technology for mobile location-based services and advertising, was acquired by eBay for a reported $135 million. Where will be rolled into eBay’s PayPal business unit, helping eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) achieve its goal of strengthening itself in the areas of mobile and local commerce.

—Boston-based Humedica, a developer of clinical informatics technology, nabbed $20 million in an equity funding round. The firm previously raised a $30 million financing from Bain Capital Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and the investment bank Leerink Swann.

—Chelmsford, MA-based Brooks Automation (NASDAQ: BRKS) said it sold its Portland, OR-based contract manufacturing unit to Canadian firm Celestica, for $80 million in cash. The firm, which makes technology for semiconductor applications, said the sale will help it better focus on developing technology for controlled temperature and pressure environments.

—Mersana Therapeutics, a Cambridge-based developer of cancer drugs, raised $6 million toward a $10 million debt-based funding round from seven investors, an SEC filing showed.

—Next Step Living, a Boston-based provider of energy efficiency services for the home, pinned down $1.5 million of an equity round that could hit $2.8 million, from nine investors. Last year the company raised $2.6 million in Series B money from Black Coral Capital, the Clean Energy Venture Group, and Triumvirate Environmental president and CEO John McQuillan.

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Biotectix is putting some of its new financial firepower to work.

The Ann Arbor, MI-based startup, a spinoff from the University of Michigan, said Monday that it acquired the intellectual property portfolio of Chameleon BioSurfaces in Cambridge, England. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Biotectix is developing polymer materials designed to improve how implantable medical devices interact with the body and tissues, over time, such as by enhancing stability and preventing foreign body reactions to the devices.

Last fall, the company received a $3 million investment from Allied Minds, which makes seed investments in technology developed at universities and national labs. It first backed Biotectix in February 2009, alongside Ann Arbor Spark, which invested through its Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund.

Chameleon’s advanced polymer coating technology features electroconductive properties that can better control the release of drugs from implantable medical devices. For example, drug eluting stents (tiny devices that prop open clogged arterties) can release drugs over time that prevents the blood vessels from reclosing.

“The Chameleon technology is highly complementary to the…polymer materials we are actively commercializing,” Biotectix general manager Dr. James Arps said in a statement. “Importantly, it further solidifies our leading IP position in this field while giving us additional materials options with our co-development partners in the medical device field.”

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Plymouth Ventures Partners stands to cash out big from Becton, Dickinson’s (NYSE:BDX) pending acquisition of Accuri Cytometers in Ann Arbor, MI.

But the University of Michigan, where the technology originated? Uh…not so much.

Plymouth was one of Accuri’s first investors when the company spun out of the university in 2005, providing around $2 million in funding and helping to raise about $1 million more.

The investment firm, based in Ann Arbor, MI, currently owns about a 6.2 percent ownership stake in Accuri, according to founder Ian Bund.

BD did not disclose a purchase price for Accuri, though it stands to reason that Plymouth and other local investors like Arboretum Ventures will soon get a big check—or at least a big upfront check followed by future milestone payments.

In 2009, BD bought HandyLabs, another medical device startup in Ann Arbor, for $275 million.

Accuri is a private company and does not release key financial measurements like sales, profits, or year-over-year sales growth percentages. But the company has displayed strong growth in recent years, expanding beyond its core markets in the United States and Europe into Asia and South America.

In May 2010, Accuri announced it sold its 500th cell counting machine, which can cost anywhere from $49,000 to $71,000 per unit. So we’re talking about $25 million to $35 million in theoretical historical revenue, based on today’s prices.

The U-M, however, apparently has left some money on the table. Despite owning equity in most of its startups, the school does not hold any stake in Accuri.

The school structures deals that will best suit the needs of its spinouts, which can include equity and/or royalty streams. Usually, that equity ownership gets watered down into the low single digit percentages over time as outside investors put more money in, taking lots of new shares in return, and diluting the value of the original stake granted to the university.

Historically, when U-M spinoffs get acquired, that means the university gets hundreds of thousands of dollars to a couple of millions of dollars in revenues.

Winning big payouts is not the primary goal of the university, says Ken Nisbet, executive director of the school’s technology transfer office. Rather, the university hopes to deploy its technology to benefit society in the quickest and most efficient manner possible, he says.

Still, investment exits are not a bad thing, Nisbet says. The school has reaped financial benefits from sales of other university spinouts, including HandyLabs, Arbor Networks, and HealthMedia.

Nevertheless, Nisbet says, in hindsight, he wishes the school would have owned a piece of Accuri.

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Japanese communications provider NTT DoCoMo, which acquired a 35 percent stake in San Diego’s PacketVideo last year for $45.5 million, says it is acquiring the remaining 65 percent from holding company NextWave Wireless for $111.6 million.

Under terms of the deal, PacketVideo will become a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT DoCoMo. It will operate autonomously, with its own board of directors, under the leadership of its founder and longtime CEO, Jim Brailean. The company was founded in 1998, and provides software used by multimedia services around the world on millions of home and mobile devices.

“This investment in PacketVideo’s future by DoCoMo is a clear endorsement of PV’s leadership and innovation in media convergence and is designed to further that success,” Brailean tells me by e-mail tonight.

PacketVideo was the first company to put video on a cell phone in 1999, and PacketVideo says it provides more than 15 music services for mobile operators, including Verizon VCast Music, AT&T Music, Vodafone India, TeliaSonera, Telstra, Rogers Canada, Telus, and others. The company says it plans to continue to support all of its worldwide customers, and the majority of its business will continue to come from outside of Japan.

What is unclear—at least at this hour—is what future remains for NextWave Wireless, the San Diego holding company that has operated PacketVideo since 2005, when it acquired the wireless multimedia technology provider. In recent years, NextWave had been dismantling or selling off its wireless semiconductor and network equipment businesses.

PacketVideo was the last major operating business for NextWave, which was delisted last month from the Nasdaq stock market for failing to meet the exchange’s requirement for maintaining a minimum $1 per share closing bid. In his e-mail to me, Brailean says NextWave are still holding and operating their wireless spectrum assets.

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Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced today it will be eliminating 300 manufacturing jobs by the end of 2015 at its Andover, MA, biotech plant, as part of a restructuring plan following its $68 billion acquisition of New Jersey-based Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) last year. Pfizer will be cutting about 6,000 jobs over the next few years, by shutting down eight sites and reducing headcount at another six plants worldwide, in order to increase the efficiency in its manufacturing processes, the announcement said. The job cuts will leave Pfizer with about 2,000 employees in Massachusetts, including its two locations in Cambridge.

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Google pulled off the veil this week to reveal the portfolio companies in its two-year-old venture fund. Add that to a flurry of startup funding rounds, a stock sale, and an acquisition transaction, and it’s made for a busy deals news week for us in New England.

—Management Health Solutions, a Fairfield, CT, maker of inventory management software for hospitals, completed a $7 million Series B round of funding, led by Enhanced Equity Fund.

—I tracked startup deals in March that rang in under $1 million. There were 16 what we call “under-the-radar” transactions throughout the New England region, the largest number of such deals we had seen so far this year.

—Burlington, MA-based HealthEdge Software, a healthcare payment software provider, raised $1.5 million of a planned $3.5 million round of debt, options, and warrants. This comes after the company raised $3.5 million in equity-based funding in July 2009.

—StreamBase Systems, a Lexington, MA-based provider of data processing software, pulled in $5.5 million in debt, options, and warrants. Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners, and In-Q-Tel are investors in the company.

—Thinking Screen Media, a company that delivers news, photos, and content to Internet-connected screens, raised $2 million in Series B financing and through the sale of one of its divisions, the company’s CEO told Wade. The Wellesley Hills, MA-based startup is also shifting from delivering content to digital photo frames to focusing on the iPad.

—Cambridge, MA-based Idenix Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IDIX), a developer of anti-viral drugs, priced a 6.46-million-share stock offering at $4.35 a share. The deal, for which Thomas Weisel Partners will serve as book-running manager, will bring in … Next Page »

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News of financings, partnerships, royalties, and acquisitions among New England’s video game, transportation, biotech, and energy companies have kept us buzzing in the last week.

—Westwood, MA-based online games maker Turbine was purchased by the Home Entertainment Group of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, a unit of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). Turbine produces the massively multiplayer online game franchise Lord of the Rings Online, based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Time Warner didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but a source in a Boston Globe story pegged the transaction at $160 million, which would represent a modest return for Turbine investors, who have put slightly more than $100 million into the 16-year-old company.

—Zipcar, the Cambridge, MA-based car-sharing service, announced it had acquired Streetcar, a U.K.-based company with a similar business model. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Zipcar said it brought the companies’ combined memberships to more than 400,000 and gives it the opportunity to further expand in Europe.

—Qualtré, a Marlborough, MA, maker of motion sensors for consumer electronics, announced it closed an $8 million Series B round of funding, which included contributions from Matrix Partners and Pilot House Ventures. The money brings the company’s total funding pot to $13 million, and will go to operations, sales, and development of its products, which have applications in cellular handsets, navigation devices, and gaming controllers.

—France-based bioMérieux shelled out $5 million for an equity stake in Cambridge-based genomics analysis company Knome, as part of a partnership deal in which it will use Knome’s technology to develop diagnostics. BioMérieux appointed its CEO Stéphane Bancel as a director on the Knome board as part of the deal.

—I rounded up the top 10 largest venture deals inked in the first three months of 2010, with data from Dow Jones VentureSource, CB Insights, and the MoneyTree Report. Healthcare companies took seven of the 10 top slots, with the biggest transaction going to Andover, MA-based TransMedics at $36 million.

—Pluromed, a Woburn, MA-based maker of medical devices designed to stop bleeding during surgery, raised $1.1 million of a planned $3.9 million equity offering. Last year the company received a $500,000 loan as part of a Massachusetts initiative to further the life sciences industry in the state.

—Lebanon, NH-based Mascoma, a company developing methods for converting wood fiber and other non-edible plant material into ethanol, has raised $3.4 million of a planned $10 million round of convertible debt, an SEC filing showed. The company received a $15 million grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in June 2008 to build an ethanol plant in Kinross, in Chippewa County, and the state later pledged another $8.5 million toward the site. The new funding, which came from … Next Page »

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Acquisitions, partnership agreements, and early round financing for some stealthy operations made it a busy deals news week for us.

—Third Rock Ventures, a Boston firm focused on investments in life sciences companies, plans to raise $400 million for its second fund, according to an SEC filing. The firm closed its first fund, with $378 million, in 2007.

—Waltham, MA-based scientific instrument maker PerkinElmer revealed it agreed to acquire Spokane, WA-based Signature Genomic Laboratories for about $90 million in cash.

—Foundation Medicine, a company that’s focused on fighting cancer by testing for genetic traits in a tumor and matching them with treatments, reported that it pulled in part of a $25 million Series A funding round. The startup is incubated out of Boston’s Third Rock Ventures, which also led the financing. In February, Ryan was the first to report that former CombinatoRx (NASDAQ: CRXX) CEO Alexis Borisy was leading Foundation.

—Catabasis Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge-based startup run by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals veterans, revealed in a regulatory filing that it pulled in $7.7 million of a planned $39.7 million financing. The stealthy operation is developing treatments for inflammatory and metabolic diseases by leveraging the protective effects of omega-3 fatty acids.

—Cambridge’s Agios Pharmaceuticals nabbed $130 million from Summit, NJ-based Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG), in exchange for an exclusive option to license and develop Agios’ experimental cancer drugs, for a certain span of time. The deal essentially makes the Cambridge company Celgene’s cancer metabolism drug unit without outright acquiring it.

—The Daily Grommet, a Lexington, MA-based e-commerce company that promotes consumer products with online videos, has raised $3.4 million in Series A funding. The financing included … Next Page »

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CareFusion (NYSE: CFN), a San Diego-based medical device company, announced today that it will acquire Medegen, a maker of disposable systems for delivering medication intravenously, for $225 million in cash. The acquisition of Ontario, CA-based Medegen will be the first for CareFusion, which became a publicly traded company in September 2009 after spinning off from Cardinal Health. CareFusion said Medegen’s systems, which help reduce blood infections associated with intravenous systems, will be a strategic fit with its portfolio of infusion products.

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Rocket Software, a Newton, MA-headquartered enterprise software maker, announced it will acquire data management company Computer Corporation of America. Financial details of the deal between Rocket and Waltham, MA-based CCA were not disclosed.  Rocket pulled in $91.9 million in an equity offering in October and acquired Folio and NXT, two publishing products from Microsoft, in December.

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Novell has received an unsolicited offer from one of its largest stockholders to acquire all of the Waltham, MA-based network software maker’s outstanding shares for $5.75 a share, the company confirmed in a press release. The bid from Elliott Associates, which owns 8.5 percent of Novell common stock, represents a 49 percent premium over Novell’s current value, the private equity firm said in a letter to the Novell board Tuesday. The $2 billion offer will go under review by the company’s board of directors.

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Early round venture funding dominated the deals news this week, but there were still announcements of partnerships, acquisitions, and IPOs to mix it up.

—Newton, MA-based energy storage company General Compression announced it had closed more than $17 million in commitments to its Series A round, but did not reveal how much of that money was in new equity investments. The funding came from U.S. Renewables Group and Duke Energy, and will go to building the company’s first commercial-scale wind power storage unit.

—Marathon Technologies, a Littleton, MA maker of fault-tolerance software, brought its Series B funding round up to $13.5 million, thanks to a third close, a regulatory filing revealed last week.

—Stealthy life sciences startup Ra Pharmaceuticals raised $10.3 million of a planned $27.6 million round of equity-based financing, according to an SEC filing. The company is incubated at the Boston office of Morgenthaler Ventures and is lead by Doug Treco, who co-founded former Transkaryotic Therapies, a Cambridge, MA company acquired by Irish drugmaker Shire in 2005.

—Intrinsic Therapeutics raised $18 million of a $20 million round that included equity, options, and warrants. An SEC filing listed New Enterprise Associates, Spray Venture Partners, and New Leaf Venture Partners as directors of Woburn, MA-based Intrinsic, which develops spinal implants to treat disc herniation.

—-Athenahealth, a Watertown, MA-based maker of Internet software for medical practices, and doctors-only social networking company Sermo announced a partnership early this week, but didn’t disclose financial terms of the deal. Athena plans on … Next Page »

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Despite the Presidents Day holiday, it’s been a big life sciences week for us.

—A new venture fund is being assembled by the founders of Cambridge, MA-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a developer of treatments for aging-related diseases that went to GlaxoSmithKline for more than $700 million in 2008. Christoph Westphal, Michelle Dipp, and Rich Aldrich have pulled in $50.7 million from 24 undisclosed investors for their Longwood Founders Fund, according to an SEC filing.

—Helicos Biosciences (NASDAQ:HLCS) president Steve Lombardi has resigned, the Cambridge-based company disclosed in a regulatory filing last Friday. Lombardi officially concluded his full-time work and his role on the Helicos board on February 11, but will continue to earn his salary through August. Helicos, which makes genetic analysis instruments, didn’t disclose the reasons for Lombardi’s departure, but said it wasn’t due to a conflict with company policies.

—Luke caught up with the CEO of Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, a New Haven, CT-based antibiotic developer that’s raised $35 million in the last year. The company is hoping to get help from a Big Pharma company on a trial for its top drug candidate, which should lead to an application with the FDA to market the drug in 2012, if all goes well.

—Ryan looked at the bumpy ride experienced by Lantheus Medical Imaging, a North Billerica company once owned by Bristol-Myers Squibb. The firm’s big focus is on new products like its contrast agent for diagnosing cardiovascular diseases, but it struggles to gain the name recognition that its previous owner had.

—Cambridge-based social networking site PatientsLikeMe announced that it acquired ReliefInsite, an online pain management firm that helps patients track their pain levels and share them with doctors. The move comes just after PatientsLikeMe’s West Coast rival, Keas, brokered a deal with Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) to expand the use of its health-monitoring software.

—The Carl Icahn story continues. The big biotech investor known for gobbling up shares at companies such as Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) and Amilyn Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AMLN) has taken a bigger stake in Cambridge’s Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ), increasing his holdings from 1.5 million shares in fourth quarter of 2009 to 4.6 million shares earlier this month.

—Eleven Biotherapeutics roared out of stealth mode with a $35 million Series A round, Luke reported. The Cambridge company, which looks to engineer protein treatments for blood clot disorders and autoimmune diseases, also has assembled a team of big names from the biotech and venture worlds.

—Providence, RI-based NABsys nabbed $7 million in Series B funding led by Stata Venture Partners, run by Analog Devices co-founder and chairman Ray Stata.  NABsys, whose DNA sequencing technology hinges on semiconductor innovations, will use the funding from Stata to develop a platform intended to streamline the reading of DNA chains.

—Ryan wrote about healthcare software provider Sentillion’s entry into the big leagues with its acquisition by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Few aspects of Andover, MA-based Sentillion’s business have changed since the access management software company became part of Microsoft’s health and life sciences unit, says CEO Robert Seliger, who will stay on as a general manager.

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