Drug development programs got extended at two San Diego life sciences companies, while others had some good news on the fund-raising front. We wrap it all up for you here.

—Fate Therapeutics, a startup working to supply “industrialized” stem cells for the pharmaceutical industry without using embryos, said it raised $30 million in venture capital. That brings the total amount raised by the San Diego-based company to about $50 million since its inception two years ago.

—Cadence Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CADX) said the FDA has delayed its review of the San Diego company’s intravenous pain reliever by three months, to Feb. 12. Cadence provided additional data to the FDA after an advisory panel raised concerns about liver damage from excessive doses of acetaminophen. But Cadence said it remains confident it will win FDA approval of its drug, which contains acetaminophen.

—Carlsbad, CA-based Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS) and its Big Pharma partner, Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ), have extended the timeline for their much-anticipated cholesterol-lowering drug by nearly a year. The companies reported encouraging results from a clinical trial, but noted that four out of 34 patients saw their liver enzymes increase to three times normal, a sign of potential liver damage. The companies plan to tinker with the dose of the injectible drug in future trials.

—San Diego-based NextImage Medical, a developer of a Web-based system for scheduling and managing diagnostic imaging services, reporting raising $5 million in a venture round led by Chrysalis Ventures of Louisville, KY.

—San Diego-based Altair Therapeutics, a company developing inhalable drugs to block inflammatory proteins involved in asthma and other respiratory diseases, has closed on the second part of a Series A venture financing, bringing the total amount raises this year to $17 million.

—San Diego-based Cyntellect, which makes work stations used by biotechs for cell analysis, purification, and processing, raised $15.5 million so far in a secondary round that aims to raise a total of $18.6 million, according to a recent regulatory filing.

—GenVault, a Carlsbad, CA-based company that markets dry-storage technologies that allow scientists to store biological samples at room temperature, said it expects to break even by the end of next year. The startup has raised about $32 million so far.

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Sony Ericsson says it plans to close its operations in San Diego as part of a global consolidation that the cell phone handset maker announced today. The London-based joint venture between Sweden’s LM Ericsson and Japan’s Sony Corp plans to move its North American headquarters from Research Triangle, NC, to Atlanta, and consolidate its product development operations by closing sites in six locations—San Diego; Research Triangle, NC; Seattle; Miami; Kista, Sweden; and Chennai, India. About 1,600 jobs are being eliminated.

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Long before San Diego was known as a hub of telecommunications innovation or for its proliferation of biotech companies, it was a leading center for the development of deep underwater technologies.

During the 1960s and ’70s, scientists from the U.S. Navy laboratories on Point Loma and UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography founded numerous startups with technologies derived from underwater sensors, acoustics, and signal processing techniques that had been developed for the Navy’s cat-and-mouse games with Soviet submarines. Robotic technology that the Navy had developed to recover a hydrogen bomb from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea in 1966 led almost directly to the formation of Hydroproducts and Ametek Straza, two companies that made deep ocean ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) in San Diego during the 1970s. Hydroproducts and Ametek Straza faded from San Diego, however, after they were acquired by bigger companies that wanted to introduce ROVs to the offshore oil and gas industry.

It might not be apparent on the surface, but much of that expertise in subsea technologies remains in San Diego today, according to Leonard Pool, who founded Sidus Solutions in 2000 to develop deep underwater pan-and-tilt camera systems and related ROV positioning equipment. Pool, who is moderating a panel discussion today on “marine technology as an important growth industry” for San Diego, says close to 150 companies continue to ply their trade here.

Alvin Diving off California

“When the U.S. Navy decided that San Diego was going to be a port for submarines, all these companies sprang up,” Pool tells me. “We do get looked at as a cottage industry.” He says these companies have thrived, despite a post-Cold War decline in defense funding for new submarine-hunting technologies. One likely reason, Pool says, is that the “oil and gas community continues to look at San Diego as a hub for subsea technology development.”

Pool’s panel discussion is part of “The Maritime Collaboration Summit,” a two-day conference organized by the Maritime Alliance, a San Diego non-profit industry group, aboard the tourism ship Inspiration Hornblower. The summit, which ends today, is intended to increase awareness of San Diego’s importance as a hub for technology innovation, and to encourage collaboration between the scientific community and commercial maritime innovators, according to Michael B. Jones, president of the Maritime Alliance.

“Right now, the maritime community in San Diego is very fragmented with little visibility or public understanding of its importance,” says Jones, who also heads …Next Page »

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San Diego serial entrepreneur Michael Robertson is going to have to find something else to do now that Gizmo5, the VoIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) company he founded in 2003, has become part of a certain search giant to the north. We have that news and more.

—Google confirmed that it’s buying San Diego-based Gizmo5, a six-year-old company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. The service will become part of the Google Voice number-unification service. Google did not disclose the purchase price, which media reports put at about $30 million. Gizmo5’s 6 million users will still be able to use the service, according to a statement. But Google is suspending new Gizmo5 signups, and existing users can no longer sign up for a call-in number.

—Platformic, a Web-based startup that enables customers to create and manage their own websites, said it is adding social media capabilities. The two-year-old San Diego-based company, which has targeted broadcast companies, says its expanded software-as-a-service product will help a broadcaster’s audience share photos, create their own user profiles, and create personal blogs on the broadcaster’s Platformic-powered website.

—Qualcomm’s No. 2 executive opened a regional mobile technology conference in San Diego by providing an overview of steps the chipmaking giant is taking to help ease the pressure on wireless network bottlenecks as mobile data traffic soars. Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer told the 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference that in the year 2014, worldwide mobile data traffic in one month will exceed mobile data traffic for all of 2008.

—Technology innovations that help companies optimize their profitability will likely lead to the next wave of analytics-based software startups, according to Stephen Coggeshall of San Diego-based ID Analytics. Another hot area will be analytics that can help forecast consumer behavior, said Coggeshall, who was participating in a discussion about new opportunities in analytics during the San Diego Software Industry Council’s annual forum on analytics.

—Israel’s Panoramic Power won $250,000 and became the first winner of the top QPrize, the incentive prize competition launched earlier this year by Qualcomm Ventures. Panoramic Power is developing energy-monitoring wireless technology that enables a company or institution to deploy so-called “smart grid” technologies within their existing facilities.

—The San Diego-based Cannon Power Group said is getting $19.4 million in federal renewable energy grants to help fund construction of a giant wind farm in eastern Washington state, about 110 miles east of Portland, OR. The $1 billion Windy Point/Windy Flats project is expected to generate enough electricity for 250,000 homes.

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San Diego-based Cyntellect , which makes work stations used by biotechs for cell analysis, purification, and processing, has raised $15.5 million so far in a secondary round that aims to raise a total of $18.6 million, according to a recent regulatory filing.

Cyntellect says its instruments are used in life sciences research, biopharmaceutical production, stem cell research, and drug discovery. The company says its cytometers provide scientists with rapid, high-quality imaging and analysis of cells in every well of a 384-well microplate array. Cyntellect says its instruments can scan an entire well while maintaining consistent illumination for accurate cell identification from the center to the well edge. The company’s product line also includes an automated system for cultivating cell lines used in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

The current venture round consists of equity investments and convertible warrants, according to the filing. Cyntellect was founded in 1997, and earlier investors in the company include Bru II Venture Capital Fund, Iceland Genomics Ventures, Sigma-Aldrich, Sumitomo, and Third Security, according to VentureWire.

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Some San Diego life sciences companies reported a burst of new financing, while embattled Sequenom told investors it’s trying to conserve its available cash. Here’s our rundown of the latest highlights:

—San Diego’s Trius Therapeutics, a venture-backed biotech developing a new antibiotic for treating acute and life-threatening bacterial infections, disclosed plans to raise as much as $86 million in an initial public stock offering. With additional funding, the company will proceed to Phase 3 clinical trials of torezolid, which Trius describes as a second-generation successor to linezolid, the Pfizer antibiotic known as Zyvox.

—Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker: LIFE]]), the Carlsbad, CA-based provider of biotech instruments and lab supplies, agreed to acquire Woburn, MA-based BioTrove, which has developed a high throughput gene expression and genotyping analysis system.

— SpectraScience, the San Diego medical device maker, has raised more than $4.3 million through a private placement that combines preferred shares and warrants. SpectraScience (OTCBB: [[ticker: SCIE]]) CEO Jim Hitchin told Bruce the offering closes a $5 million round the company began earlier this year.

—PaxVax, a San Diego startup backed by Seattle’s Ignition Capital, has raised $2 million of a planned $6 million investment round. The biotech founded in early 2007 is developing a new type of vaccine that is administered as oral tablets and avoids much of the requirements that conventional vaccines require.

—Sequenom, San Diego’s embattled diagnostics company, said it expects to end the year with $39 million in cash—but that’s not enough to get through 2010 without raising funds or slowing spending. In April, Sequenom (NASDAQ: [[ticker: SQNM]]) disclosed that it had “mishandled data” from a prenatal Down syndrome diagnostic test, indefinitely postponing that product launch.

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San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) says Panoramic Power, a wireless sensor startup based in Kidron, Israel, is the winner of the first QPrize, the incentive prize competition launched earlier this year by Qualcomm Ventures. Panoramic Power has developed energy monitoring wireless technology that enables a company or institution to deploy Smart Grid technologies within their existing facilities. Panoramic Power, which previously won $100,000 as a QPrize regional winner, was awarded another $150,000 and the opportunity to compete in a global business plan competition held at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

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[Corrected 11/11/09, 3:15 pm. See below] Qualcomm chief operating officer, Len Lauer, says the San Diego wireless chipmaking giant is working across a broad front of technology development to accommodate a surge in wireless data traffic.

“The mobile Internet has arrived,” Lauer says in the opening keynote talk yesterday at the 2009 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference. With more than 4 billion wireless subscribers around the world now—including 885 million 3G phone users—Lauer says the growth in wireless data is reflected by a roughly one-third increase in revenue reported over the past year by Verizon, AT&T, and other major carriers.

[Corrects to say Lauer was comparing monthly data traffic in 2014, not monthly growth in data traffic] By 2014, or just five years, Lauer says  worldwide mobile data traffic in one month will exceed total mobile data traffic for all of 2008.

Qualcomm founder and former chairman and CEO Irwin Jacobs and his son Paul Jacobs, who is Qualcomm’s current chairman and CEO, sounded a similar theme when they warned of capacity constraints last month during a keynote appearance at the CTIA Fall 2009 conference in San Diego.

In addition to the increasing demand for mobile data from smart phones and netbooks, Lauer says the trend can only accelerate as new wireless device categories proliferate, especially in what he calls machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Examples of M2M technology developers include CardioNet, a Pennsylvania wireless health company that uses wireless sensors to continuously monitor heart patients for irregular heartbeats; wireless smart grid technologies being deployed by electric utilities (including San Diego Gas & Electric), and eBook devices like Amazon’s Kindle.

“Other operators are seeing this as a viable market, but it is going to take awhile to develop,” Lauer says, citing estimates that 229 million M2M cellular connections are forecast for 2013. “We do see from Qualcomm’s standpoint this being a very large opportunity for our chips.”

To cope with the surge in wireless data traffic, Lauer outlined a range of technology advances that Qualcomm has underway:

—The latest generation of advanced wireless receivers, which include updated revisions to the EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) telecommunications standard (part of Qualcomm’s CDMA2000 family), operate …Next Page »

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Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE), the Carlsbad, CA-based provider of biotech instruments and lab supplies, says it has agreed to acquire Woburn, MA-based BioTrove, which has developed a high throughput gene expression and genotyping analysis system. BioTrove, which withdrew plans to raise $75 million in an IPO last year, says the flexible array format of its OpenArray technology enables researchers to perform more than 3,000 PCR or qPCR gene expression assays at a time. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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Beverly, MA-based Hamilton Thorne, which makes laser equipment used in stem-cell research labs and fertility clinics, has raised $2.2 million in a private stock placement and debt conversion deal, according to an announcement released last week. A the same time, the company, which recently completed a merger with Ottawa, Ontario-based Calotto Capital, will soon be listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, a Canadian stock exchanged headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. Meg Spencer, Hamilton Thorne’s CEO, said in a press release that joining the TSX will give the company—which had previously raised about $13 million in venture backing from Brook Venture Partners and StarLake Capital—access to “a larger pool of capital to further advance our commercialization strategy.”

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San Diego’s Gizmo5, which was rumored to be a Skype acquisition target for $50 million about three weeks ago, is now reported to have been sold—except the buyer is identified as Google, and the price is put at $30 million.

Both the Skype and Google reports were exclusives from TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, who initially explained that Skype’s acquisition of Gizmo5 was the perfect backup plan in case Skype lost control of certain patents to its core technology that were the subject of lawsuits filed by Skype’s prospective buyers. Now Skype doesn’t really need Gizmo5, since eBay reached a comprehensive settlement with Skype’s founders last week. TechCrunch now says, citing “multiple sources with knowledge of the deal,” that Google has therefore stepped in to acquire Gizmo5.

Gizmo5, which was founded by Michael Robertson of MP3.com fame, provides free VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software and related technology for making Internet-based phone calls. After seeing the TechCrunch account earlier today, I sent an e-mail to Robertson asking, “Can you confirm? Can you discuss?”

He replied by e-mail, saying, “No and no. Can’t comment on any rumors. Sorry.”

The deal could make sense. While Google Talk is among Google’s many free offerings, the on-line chatting service is not set up to call specific phone numbers, and both parties in a call must have the Google Talk client running for it to work. TechCrunch says, anyway, that the Gizmo5 acquisition would enable Google to combine Google Talk with Google Voice, the application it has been testing that allows users to have a single phone number that connects to a variety of features, including conference calls, phone call recording, and text messaging.

While Google was mum on the Gizmo5 report at the time of this writing, it did confirm one acquisition today, saying that it has agreed to pay $750 million to acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider based in San Mateo, CA. Wade offers his perspective and some reaction among Boston’s mobile ad startups to the deal here.

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Bothell, WA-based Verathon, which markets a simple ultrasound technology to help doctors diagnose common bladder disorders, has been acquired by Sarasota, FL-based Roper Industries in a pair of transactions worth a combined $356 million.

Roper (NYSE: ROP), a company with a market capitalization of $4.8 billion, made the announcement Friday. It said it acquired Verathon and Montgomery, AL-based United Toll for a combined $356 million, although it didn’t break out the value of each individual company. Adding those two companies will boost Roper’s revenues by more than $140 million in 2010, the company said.

Verathon has been one of the under-the-rader success stories in the Seattle-area ultrasound cluster. The company, formerly known as Diagnostic Ultrasound, was founded by Gerald McMorrow about 25 years ago. It is best known for a fast, easy-to-use diagnostic tool called BladderScan that, like the name suggests, does 3-D scans of the bladder to spot common urinary problems that urologists and primary care physicians want to look for. The company later diversified with another diagnostic tool called GlideScope, which is supposed to help doctors get a clear look inside a patient’s airway so they can do fast and efficient insertions of breathing tubes. The company has grown to more than 400 employees worldwide, according to its website.

The management teams at both Verathon and United Toll are expected to stay on the job after the deals close, Roper said.

News of the deal was reported earlier today by TechFlash.

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It was a busy week for local technology news.

—Two teams from San Diego and a third from Northern California demonstrated their development of advanced chemical sensor prototypes that are tiny enough to be found inside ordinary cell phones. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is funding the Cell-All program, with a goal of basically creating an anti-terrorism app for cell phones that would enable authorities to crowd-source chemical detection.

—MaxLinear has filed for its initial public stock offering. The Carlsbad, CA-based fabless chipmaker, which specializes in designing semiconductor-based television receivers, intends to raise about $100 million through its IPO. The market may be de-frosting a bit, with 47 IPOs so far in 2009, compared with 45 last year, and 272 in 2007.

—ProQuo, a San Diego-based Web 2.0 company that was founded in 2007, was quietly shut down after taking in a total of $15 million in venture capital from Menlo Park, CA-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson and San Diego-based Mission Ventures. ProQuo was never able to validate its business model; its website offered consumers a way to remove their names from mass-mailing lists for free, and the company planned to sell its optimized lists back to mass marketing companies.

—San Diego’s wireless industry group, CommNexus, celebrated the opening of EvoNexus, its free high-tech incubator, by announcing the selection of three more startup companies: EcoATM, MicroPower Technologies, and TetraVue. CommNexus CEO Rory Moore says EvoNexus is believed to be the first incubator that is completely free for startups—that is, it doesn’t even require an equity stake in participating companies, as most incubuators do.

—Jitterbug, the San Diego wireless provider that puts an emphasis on simplicity, has acquired MobiWatch, a Waltham, MA-based startup developing mobile personal emergency response services. A regulatory filing shows that Jitterbug’s parent, GreatCall, provided 630,000 shares of common stock to MobiWatch and its shareholders in a deal valued at $107,100.

—San Diego-based Networkfleet is using its technology to help companies that operate fleets of vehicles go green by monitoring engine emissions and ensuring that vehicles are operating efficiently. Co-founder Diego Borrego told me the company also expects to be a player as consolidations sweep through the fleet tracking industry.

—EcoDog, a Vista, CA, cleantech startup that has developed a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill, was named best of show at GadgetFest, the annual fall competition sponsored by CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group. EcoDog founding CEO Ron Pitt won over the crowd when he declared, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

—San Diego-based cleantech startup EESG is looking to raise $1.2 million to expand the 10-employee company’s sales staff, purchase inventory, and ramp up public relations and marketing. The company’s founders told me they have raised about half so far, including $300,000 from Longboard Capital Advisors, a green investment firm based in Santa Monica, CA.

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MaxLinear, a fabless RF chipmaker based in Carlsbad, CA, filed a registration statement today for an initial public stock offering, marking only the second IPO in the San Diego area since Bridgepoint Education made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange in April. About 45 IPOs have taken place nationwide so far this year.

Eight semiconductor industry veterans founded MaxLinear in 2003. The company specializes in designing highly integrated, CMOS (Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) chips, and has had notable success designing semiconductor-based TV tuners. Maxlinear says its customers include wireless module makers, original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers.

David Rodewald, an outside spokesman for the company, said MaxLinear executives would not comment beyond the statement issued today.

The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering were not disclosed, although Dow Jones says the Carlsbad company plans to sell an estimated $100 million in stock. The company plans to use the proceeds for working capital and general corporate purposes.

The founders self-funded MaxLinear for the first year, and co-founder and CEO Kishore Seendripu talked about their efforts to generate revenue by taking on consulting work and other outside work during a panel discussion on bootstrapping in San Diego six months ago. Seendripu defined bootstrapping as “a self-sustaining process that proceeds without external help.”

MaxLinear secured its first round of venture funding in late 2004, after completing development of its first prototype silicon television tuner using CMOS technology. The company identifies its venture investors on its website as San Diego-based Mission Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners of Menlo Park, CA, and Battery Ventures, which has offices in Waltham, MA, and Menlo Park, CA.

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Just came back from the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association’s annual meeting in downtown Seattle, where 500-plus biotechies and distinguished guests (including more than a few local politicians) gathered for a quiche-and-berries breakfast and some keen networking.

The keynote speaker was Elias Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health and now a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Just a few highlights from his talk here:

Zerhouni laid out the top five challenges in public health, as he sees it. Nothing too surprising, but a good way to frame the whole healthcare discussion:

1. The shift from acute to chronic conditions. (“This is a worldwide issue,” he emphasized. “This is the new global health horizon.”)

2. Aging population.

3. Health disparities.

4. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. (Pandemics, for example.)

5. Emerging non-communicable diseases. (Things like obesity and depression, the latter of which the World Health Organization predicts will be the No. 1 cause of disability and dysfunction for people aged 25-44.)

As a world-class radiology researcher, Zerhouni also spoke to the scientific challenges the industry faces. He said the fundamental scientific barrier to doing “translational” research—that which leads to new products like drugs or devices—is the complexity of biological systems involved in diseases. “The explosion of data does not equate to explosion of knowledge,” he said. (This is a common theme across all fields of science and technology.)

On this front, Zerhouni stressed the importance of both external and internal sources of innovation. Meaning, the state of Washington should “find ways of bringing in collaboration on the translation or creation of knowledge.” He pointed out that “building relationships with the Asian Rim is probably your strategic advantage.”

For the politicians in the audience, Zerhouni noted, “Today when you get elected or not elected, the main driver is jobs, jobs, jobs.” He said his dream is that in a few years, biomarkers and healthcare stats will impact political campaigns, to the tune of, “In my district, Body Mass Index has dropped from X to Y.” (Luke previously reported on the issue of jobs being the driver of public support for biotech.)

The last issue Zerhouni addressed was a particularly interesting one: culture wars around science and technology. “Don’t be oblivious to the political, cultural, and moral aspects” of biotech and biomedical work, he said. “Be careful to not assume that everyone in the world believes what you do is holy and good.” Having dealt with the profound issues of evolution vs. creation in Washington DC—most notably in the context of stem cell policy—Zerhouni was sharing some hard-earned wisdom that everyone in the room could take home with them.

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Dave Paton and Dave Moody tell me they founded EESG, a San Diego cleantech startup also known as Energy Efficiency Systems Group, last year in anticipation that soaring energy prices would unleash strong demand for practical alternatives. But they didn’t focus on new technologies for alternative energy sources. They focused on energy efficiencies.

They also wanted to take advantage of their extensive experience with the hotel industry. Paton had spent 30 years working as an executive at the Hilton, Radisson, and Doubletree hotel companies. And the company the pair had previously founded, Vista, CA-based Paramount International Telecom, provided a voice-activated automated attendant and message system for the hospitality industry. So they knew hotels. As Paton and Moody put it, they understood that for a hotel to keep its four-star rating, it was going to have to keep the air-conditioning running through the summer.

As a result, Paton and Moody concluded that developing technologies to help hotels and other facilities improve their energy efficiency was a likely growth business ideally suited to their expertise and industry contacts. And it was a business that wouldn’t require huge amounts of external capital. The business partners say they set out to create a system that incorporated the best technologies for sensing and measuring energy use, for monitoring and communicating such information in meaningful ways, and for remotely managing everything—from the 15-ton air-conditioning chiller on the roof to the boiler in the basement.

“Every piece of equipment has a sweet spot that it operates at with optimum efficiency,” Moody says. The energy conservation and management systems that EESG has developed are designed to identify equipment throughout a facility, and to optimize the performance of each unit. “We know every model, every unit, every product type, and we know how to control it,” Moody says. “Our system is specifically programmed for that equipment, say a Trane 360, and to keep it operating at that sweet spot.”

To tie it all together, they hired software engineers to develop proprietary software analytics that provide a comprehensive and real-time energy audit of customer facilities. EESG also developed a Web-based interface that can be accessed online or by a smart phone. Paton says their system, once installed, reduces customers’ energy consumption by 8 percent to 15 percent annually. The partners say EESG has implemented its technology so far at four hotels in the U.S. and Canada, including the luxury Fairmont Hotel in Washington D.C.

Fairmont Hotel

“The building engineer can be anywhere in the world,” Moody says. “You just go to a secure portal, and see how the system is operating. Or maybe the vice president of asset management wants to drill down to one chiller at one property, but he also wants it aggregated to show all the chillers at all the buildings that he manages.”

So far, the founders have funded EESG’s technology development themselves, along with friends and family. But they are now looking to raise about $1.2 million to expand the 10-employee company’s sales staff, purchase inventory, and for public relations and marketing.

Moody and Paton say they have raised about half from wealthy individual investors and cleantech investment funds, such as Longboard Capital Advisors of Santa Monica, CA, which has invested $300,000 from its Blue Earth Fund in EESG’s current round.

“Although we typically do not invest in early stage companies, it was an easy choice to invest in the management at rapidly growing EESG,” Longboard managing partner Brett Conrad wrote in an e-mail to me last night. “We felt like our investment risk was further reduced by management’s deep experience and relationships in hotel and resort management around the world. Because Longboard Capital Advisors focuses on clean tech investing, we are particularly excited by EESG reducing their customer’s carbon output while at the same time while achieving extraordinary ROI’s by significantly reducing energy costs from power hungry air conditioners, elevators and escalators.”

Moody sums it up a little more succinctly. “It is a good green thing for sure,” he says, “but the bottom line is that it helps you save money.”

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Light Sciences Oncology, the Bellevue, WA-based developer of an unusual drug-device combo treatment for cancer, has put itself in position to raise $35 million for its product development through setting up a line of credit and offering investors warrants to buy shares, according to a regulatory filing released today.

The latest financing comes about 16 months after Light Sciences Oncology pocketed $40.1 million in venture capital. The newest transaction gives Light Sciences Oncology the right to access a $23.3 million line of credit, along with access to $11.8 million more if investors choose to exercise warrants, according to the regulatory filing. The company hasn’t yet borrowed money under the line of credit, the document says. CEO Llew Keltner, the super-busy CEO I profiled last year, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. If Light Sciences collects the full amount, it will have raised $172 million for its drug development programs since inception.

Light Sciences Oncology is attempting to develop the first treatment of its kind against cancer. The system works by using a light-emitting diode, guided by a biopsy needle, which doctors can thread inside a solid tumor with the help of an ultrasound or CT imaging machine. The patient is then injected with an inactive chemical drug called talaporfin sodium (Aptocine). Once the light is turned on, powered by cheap AAA batteries, it is designed to activate the drug to kill tumors while sparing nearby healthy tissue. The light stays on for almost three hours, during which time the patient can watch TV or read a magazine. After the treatment period, the patient goes home.

The technology is being put to the test in a pivotal clinical trial of more than 200 patients with liver cancer. Light Sciences Oncology hasn’t yet announced the results of that study, which began recruiting patients in November 2006. But other signs from the company have suggested that it likes what it is seeing so far. In August, Light Sciences started two new clinical trials of the technology for two very different applications—treating children with neurofibromatosis, and for treatment of an enlarged prostate, also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia.

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The moderators of San Diego’s 9th Annual GadgetFest kept saying during Tuesday night’s showcase for new technology products that past winners have gone on to even greater glory and success. That may or may not be good news for the Motorola Droid that goes on sale tomorrow at Verizon stores nationwide. After making a cursory appearance at CTIA and perhaps elsewhere, the Droid debuted its impressive features and ended the evening as runner-up.

GadgetFest moderators Ken Rutkowski and Andy Abramson reminded the audience that Grand Central, a GadgetFest winner three years ago, was acquired shortly after the 2006 event by Google (and has since been transformed into Google Voice). They also pointed to Motorola’s Q Phone, Sling Media’s Slingbox, and the Truphone as paragons of GadgetFest virtue. All three devices were introduced at GadgetFest instead of the CTIA or other major trade shows, according to CommNexus, the San Diego wireless industry group that sponsors the event.

So expectations were high. But the Droid, with all its iPhone-slaying hoopla, finished the GadgetFest competition in a dead-heat with EcoDog, a local cleantech startup that trotted out Fido—a device that helps homeowners sniff out savings in their electric utility bill. The GadgetFest judges ultimately proclaimed EcoDog this year’s best in show after the Vista, CA-based company received perceptibly more-boisterous applause from the audience in the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall at Qualcomm’s San Diego headquarters.

At the end of the show, while the judges were deciding how to resolve the tie, one of the moderators asked EcoDog founder and CEO Ron Pitt if he had anything more to say. He replied, “My product is the only product up here tonight that saves you more money than it costs.”

So what are the up and coming gadgets that got previewed at GadgetFest? Here’s a rundown, just in time for the Christmas shopping season:

—TelCentris, the San Diego-based provider of unified communications services, presented an update to its VoxOx system, which aggregates voice over Internet technology, text messaging, instant messaging, serial conferencing, file sharing, and e-mail onto one user interface. As TelCentris executives explained to me in July, the company makes most …Next Page »

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Craig Mundie is a geek, and I mean that in the best possible way. Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, the 17-year veteran of Redmond, WA, still talks like an engineer, throwing out terms like “heterogeneous machine architectures,” “GUIs” (graphical user interfaces), and “clouds and clients” like there’s no tomorrow. It’s kind of refreshing, given that he is in charge of setting the long-term agenda for one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

Mundie is in the midst of a weeklong tour of some top universities around the country. He called me yesterday from Cambridge, MA, where he had just finished a presentation to Harvard University students, faculty, and guests. He visits the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (my alma mater) today, and comes to Kane Hall at the University of Washington tomorrow afternoon. It’s similar to the college tours Bill Gates used to do.

From what I can tell, the goal is to stir up interest in computer science, give audiences a glimpse of future computing systems as Microsoft sees them, and stimulate discussions about how these technologies can help solve some pressing global problems. (You can read more about Mundie’s tour and demos in this Seattle Times story.)

Besides hearing Mundie’s thoughts on computer science education and the future of computing, I wanted to drill down and ask him about the challenge of taking on Microsoft’s strategy development (after Gates stepped down last year) in the most difficult economic times in recent memory. I also wanted to ask him about the deeper culture of Microsoft, the renewed role of research in the company’s future, and the importance of nurturing relationships around the world—and his secret ally in that quest.

Here are some edited highlights from our conversation:

Xconomy: What are you trying to get across to university audiences on this tour?

Craig Mundie: In these presentations, I’m trying to get them to think not only about how computing evolves, but with that evolution, what kinds of problems will become approachable, and what are the new methods? Several things are evolving in parallel [and leading to more heterogeneous and complex machines]. That begets the requirement of how to do programming around parallel computing. With very high-scale computing facilities, the cloud and the client come together to form one system that people will program. They will use those things together with new display and sensing technologies.

Just as the GUI revolutionized computing, we could see a similar revolution with more natural interactions with machines, rather than just “type and point and click.” That will expand the number of people who can interact with computers. With the diversity, rooms can become computers [for instance]. You won’t think of them so much as a computer.

X: What are some of the global problems you think advanced computing will help solve?

CM: Beyond the computer science realm, I’ve talked about energy and the environment. I show one piece of research work we’re doing to compose computational models, a simplified climate model, at Princeton and Microsoft Research. It shows linkages between deforestation in the Amazon and atmospheric temperatures around the rest of the world. If you were a policy person, these kinds of things would give you tools to support your decision making.

In energy, we’re doing computer modeling and direct visualizations. I showed a model, loaned to us from TerraPower [the nuclear power firm spun off from Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures …Next Page »

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Seattle-based Calypso Medical Technologies announced today it has signed a strategic development agreement with Siemens Healthcare to jointly develop products for radiation therapy of pancreas and lung cancer, as well as prostate cancer. Financial details weren’t given. Calypso makes tracking technologies that help deliver pinpoint radiation to tumors. The company raised $50 million in September, and also has partnerships with Varian Medical Systems, Elekta, and Philips Medical.

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