A French drugmaker’s bid to acquire one of New England’s biggest biotechs turned hostile this week. Read on for this, and some of the week’s less predictable deals news from the tech and life sciences sectors.

—Watertown, MA-based WiTricity forged an alliance with Troy, MI-based Delphi Automotive aimed at developing wireless charging stations for hybrid and electric vehicles. The companies did not reveal the financial terms of the deal, which marks the first automotive partnership for WiTricity, whose primary market is wireless charging of consumer electronics.

—Dyax (NASDAQ: DYAX), the Cambridge, MA-based biotech, signed a drug development and commercialization agreement with the Japanese contract research organization CMIC. The deal, which includes a $4 million upfront payment to Dyax and potentially $102 million in development and sales milestone payments, focuses on commercializing Dyax’s DX-88 (ecallantide) in Japan.

—Transportation management software maker BirdDog Solutions of Andover, MA, raised $2.1 million in an equity-based financing round that could ultimately total $2.4 million, according to a regulatory filing.

—The Cambridge-based One Laptop per Child Foundation scored $5.6 million from Santa Clara, CA-based semiconductor maker Marvell to fund development of a tablet computer, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte told Bob. The tablet represents the third generation of OLPC’s XO laptop, and so will be called the XO 3.

—French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE:SNY) launched a hostile takeover bid for Cambridge-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) with a tender offer of $69 per share. The bid, worth $18.5 billion total, is priced the same as an earlier offer that was unanimously rejected by Genzyme’s board in August.

—The Echo Nest, a startup in Somerville, MA, that provides a music-data service for independent app developers, raised $7 million in a Series B funding round. New investor Matrix Partners led the deal, which included participation from return backer Commonwealth Capital Ventures.

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It was New England’s public life sciences companies that made the most news in the sector this week.

—Ryan chatted with Mark Corrigan, CEO of Zalicus (NASDAQ: ZLCS), about the Cambridge, MA-based company’s efforts to rebuild its image among investors after a long period of upheaval. Originally known as CombinatoRx, the firm has seen the failure in 2008 of its lead drug candidate, a series of layoffs, the departure of founding CEO Alexis Borisy, a merger with Vancouver BC-based Neuromed Pharmaceuticals, the approval of its first drug, and, last week, the name change. So what does the new name mean, Ryan asked Corrigan? “Zalicus doesn’t mean anything per se,” Corrigan said, “so it gives us an opportunity to essentially create the brand with our efforts.”

—Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) doubled down on its bet on Sunnyvale, CA-based Asthmatx, in which the Natick, MA-based medical device giant had previously invested, by agreeing to acquire the startup for $193.5 million. The agreement also includes potential payments, based on sales of Asthmatx’s catheter-based device for treating asthma, that could bring the total value of the deal to $443.5 million.

—Cambridge-based Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IRWD) sold its Lexington, MA-based bio-manufacturing subsidiary Microbia to Royal DSM, the Dutch chemicals giant, for an undisclosed sum. Ironwood, which went public in January 2010, recorded $1 million in losses from the Microbia business on its 2009 balance sheet.

—Worcester, MA-based RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII) teamed up with Waltham, MA-based EyeGate Pharma to develop RNAi-based treatments for retinal disorders. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

—Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB), the Weston, MA-based maker of multiple sclerosis drugs, was beaten in the race to gain FDA approval for the first oral MS treatment by Swiss drug giant Novartis. Novartis’s once-daily pill fingolimod (Gilenya) crossed the finish line ahead of Biogen’s BG-12, which is in late-stage development.

—Ryan took a fascinating look at Henri Termeer, CEO of biotech giant Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ), at a time when observers wonder if the executive’s days at the helm of the embattled firm are numbered. Should French drug giant Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) succeed in its efforts to acquire Cambridge-based Genzyme Termeer would likely leave, but sources close to the CEO believe he’s not nearly ready to do so, and would rather see the firm through its current challenges with manufacturing trouble and investor discontent. Termeer, they indicated, did not build Genzyme to sell, but rather to thrive as a stand-alone company.

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Big Blue is gobbling up all of New England’s IT companies—or at least that’s the impression you’d get from this week’s deals news.

—IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced it will acquire Waltham, MA-based OpenPages for an undisclosed sum. The Waltham firm, whose backers include Goldman Sachs, Globespan Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Mesirow Financial, Sigma Partners, and North Hill Ventures, makes software for managing corporate risk and compliance activities and will become part of IBM’s Business Analytics software portfolio.

—The OpenPages deal marked IBM’s 17th acquisition of a company based in Massachusetts, or with significant Massachusetts operations, since 2003. Greg gathered the details on all 17 deals, and took a look closer look at strategy behind them.

—No sooner had he done that than IBM announced an 18th Massachusetts acquisition, plunking down a whopping $1.7 billion in cash to pick up Netezza (NYSE: NZ). Marlborough, MA-based Netezza, which raised more than $100 million in its 2007 IPO, makes hardware and software that allows large corporations to combine their storage, server, and database functions in one system. IBM’s acquisition of the firm fits with Big Blue’s recent strategy of expanding its offerings in business analytics.

—Lantos Technologies, an imaging company spun out of MIT, raised $1.6 million in a Series A round of funding. Catalyst Health Ventures led the round, and … Next Page »

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—Needham, MA-based Celldex Therapeutics announced that Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) had terminated a agreement in which it licensed Celldex’s experimental cancer vaccine rindopepimut, because it no longer views the drug as a strategic priority. Celldex (NASDAQ: CLDX) will regain full rights to develop and commercialize the drug, effective November 1.

—Ryan checked in with Oliver Fetzer, chief executive of Cambridge, MA-based Cerulean Pharma, about his company’s progress in developing nanoparticle drugs designed to kill tumors. Cerulean’s lead drug candidate, CRLX101, was well-tolerated in an initial human trial.

—The FDA put clinical trials of two of Idenix Pharmaceuticals’ hepatitis C drugs on hold, causing the Cambridge-based biotech company’s stock to plummet almost 50 percent to $3.11 per share on Wednesday afternoon. Idenix was testing two of its drugs in healthy volunteers, and the FDA put the red light on the trials when the company found elevated liver toxicity in three of the patients who took both drugs.

—Cambridge, MA-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX), on the other hand, had good news about its own hepatitis C drug candidate, telaprevir. A combination of telaprevir and standard hepatitis drugs was able to cure two-thirds of patients who had failed to respond to a prior round of the standard drugs alone, in a trial involving more than 660 volunteers. Based on that study and two others, Vertex plans to file an application for FDA approval of the drug by year’s end.

—Boston-based Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, a developer of peptide-based drugs for metabolic ailments, closed a $40 million Series A financing round which included new investor Third Rock Ventures. The startup, which licensed its two lead drug candidates from the French biotech Ipsen, announced it had raised the first $21 million of the round from MPM Capital and New Enterprise Associates back in March.

—Gene sequencing instrument maker Helicos Biosciences (NASDAQ: HLCS) of Cambridge, MA, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Menlo Park, CA-based Pacific Biosciences. Helicos claims that the California firm’s technology violates its patents on a technology known as single molecule sequencing, which extend to as far as 2028.

—Anchor Therapeutics, also of Cambridge, MA, forged a partnership with the Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals division of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) that could be worth up to $480 million. The deal involves several drug targets in the fields of cancer and metabolic disease, and centers around Anchor’s “pepducin” drug technology, which the startup says offers a new way to hit a lucrative class of drug targets called G protein coupled receptors.

—U.K.-based Shire (NASDAQ: SHGPY) agreed to pay Cambridge, MA-based Acceleron Pharma as much as $498 million to co-develop and co-market drugs for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and other muscle disorders. Acceleron, which will get a $45 million upfront cash payment, has shown in animal studies that its lead drug candidate can increase muscle mass and improve strength in animals.

—Following a merger last year with Vancouver-based Neuromed Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA-based drug developer CombinatoRx announced it has changed its name to Zalicus. The company, which won its first drug approval earlier this year for the pain treatment hydromorphone HCL (Exalgo), now trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol ZLCS.

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[Updated: 2:25 pm Pacific] Trubion Pharmaceuticals, a one-time highflier in Seattle’s biotech community, said today it is getting acquired for less than $100 million upfront. The buyer is Rockville, MD-based Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS).

Shareholders in Trubion (NASDAQ: TRBN) will get a total of $96.8 million in an upfront payment from Emergent, plus as much as $38.7 million in success-based milestone payements, bringing the total potential value of the deal to $135.5 million. For that sum, Emergent will get all of the technology that Trubion has developed since its founding in 2002, to make targeted drugs for autoimmune diseases and cancer which are smaller than conventional antibodies, in the hopes that they would be more effective and potent at hitting intended targets. Trubion had an accumulated deficit of $127 million through the end of March, and had $44.3 million left in cash and investments at that point, according to its most recent quarterly report.

The deal represents a value of $4.55 a share for Trubion, a 52 percent premium over the company’s stock price of $3 at today’s close. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

The sale of Trubion shouldn’t come as a major surprise. The company’s founding CEO, Peter Thompson, departed in November, and the company was led on an interim basis ever since by one of Trubion’s venture backers—Steve Gillis of Arch Venture Partners. Trubion, as I described two years ago in these pages, underwhelmed investors in September 2007 when its lead drug candidate at the time, TRU-015, was unable to produce better results for rheumatoid arthritis patients than an already approved drug that hits the same target on cells, Genentech and Biogen Idec’s rituximab (Rituxan). Trubion went through a round of layoffs in February 2009, and shifted priorities to TRU-016, a drug that showed some promise for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and yielded a partnership with Facet Biotech.

“The acquisition of Trubion by Emergent will accelerate the continued development of our leading products and technologies,” Gillis said in a company statement. “We believe the combination of Emergent’s strong financial position and expertise in development of biologics with Trubion’s innovative SMIP and SCORPION protein therapeutic product candidates and technologies will provide an efficient and effective development path for these promising products and technologies.”

Trubion didn’t say in its statement whether any jobs will be lost as part of the Emergent takeover. The company had about 75 employees after its most recent cutbacks in February 2009. [Updated: 2:25 pm, with expanded investor list.] Trubion’s roster of backers includes Arch Venture Partners, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Venrock, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Prospect Venture Partners, and Fidelity Management, according to the company’s most recent proxy statement.

Gillis, in prepared remarks during a conference call today, said that Emergent is planning to maintain an R&D center in Seattle that will focus on drug development for the combined company. He didn’t say how many people would work at the Seattle site.

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We saw news of several local acquisition deals by technology powerhouses in the past week.

—Watertown, MA-based Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, a developer of RNA interference drugs, raised $5 million in an offering of debt and options. The startup previously raised $21.4 million in Series A funding from Abingworth Management, Skyline Ventures, and Oxford Bioscience Partners. Former Oxford general partner Doug Fambrough resigned from his post in May to become CEO of Dicerna.

—Google paid about $700 million to acquire Cambridge, MA-based ITA Software, and in turn has entered the travel search space. ITA’s technology powers the online itineraries and pricing data systems for big airlines, as well as travel comparison sites like Orbitz, Kayak, and Farecast (Bing Travel). Early this week, Greg wrote a piece about what the deal could mean for the Cambridge innovation scene and others in the travel search engine space.

—Cambridge-based Alnara Pharmaceuticals was bought by drug giant Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY). The companies didn’t reveal financial terms of the acquisition. Alnara, which has applied for FDA approval of its enzyme supplement liprotamase, a treatment for the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis, has raised about $55 million in venture capital financing in its two-year history, from investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Longwood Founders Fund, MPM Capital, and Third Rock Ventures.

—Geo-location firm Skyhook Wireless announced an agreement that brings its technology, which determines a device’s location based on the identities of nearby Wi-Fi networks, to Samsung mobile devices. No financial details were disclosed for the deal, which adds another big name to Boston-based Skyhook’s roster of heavy-hitting technology partners, including … Next Page »

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It was a short week, but the list of deals that New England’s tech and life sciences firms inked in that span is a long one. Let’s dive in:

—StyleFeeder, the Cambridge, MA-based personalized shopping website, was acquired by New York magazine publishing giant Time Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Lexington, MA-based Highland Capital Partners and Boston-based Schooner Capital have put $4 million in seed and Series A funding into the four-year-old startup.

—IkaSystems, a maker of software for healthcare payers, sealed back-to-back investment deals with deep-pocketed private equity funds. Essex Woodlands Health Ventures and Providence Equity Partners reportedly plowed a combined $120 million into the Southborough, MA-based company.

—North Andover, MA-based Nexamp, formerly known as NexGen Energy Solutions, raised $6.5 million in equity-based financing, according to a regulatory filing. Nexamp helps its customers design, finance, build, and analyze clean energy projects.

—Cardiorobotics, a startup founded by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, reported to the SEC that it has raised $5 million in equity investments. The Middletown, RI-based firm makes robots for surgery and other uses.

—Research-tool giant Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) of Waltham, MA, announced it would pay $145 million for Ahura Scientific of Wilmington, MA. The deal also entitles Ahura’s investors to potential payments based on sales of Ahura products in 2010.

—FloDesign Wind Turbine, a Wilbraham, MA-based developer of a new, jet-engine-like type of wind turbine, revealed it closed a $34.5 million Series B funding round last month. Return investor Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers and new investors Goldman Sachs, Technology Partners, and VantagePoint Venture Partners contributed to the round.

—Acton, MA-based Lumigent Technologies, a maker of automated governance, risk and compliance software, said it … Next Page »

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San Diego’s Calixa Therapeutics will be celebrating the holidays in style, after getting acquired by a Massachusetts-based company in the biggest deal of the week. Start your countdown to Christmas here with a rundown of the latest biotech news.

—Lexington, MA-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CBST) completed its $92.5-million buyout of San Diego antibiotic drug developer Calixa Therapeutics yesterday, just two days after the deal was announced. Under terms of the deal, Cubist could be required to make payments of up to $310 million if it meets certain milestones.

—Several speakers at our Xconomy San Diego forum on biotech innovations and innovators said that creative new ideas and synergies arise from collaborations—and that collaboration is one of the hallmarks of San Diego’s life sciences community. Other experts talked about fostering biotech innovation by focusing on unmet clinical needs, and the importance of creating a corporate culture that supports innovation.

—Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) CEO John Maraganore gave Luke an overview of the Cambridge, MA, company’s strategy as it moves forward on a broad front in developing its RNA interference drugs. Alnylam is pursuing many opportunities through its network of partnerships with big drugmakers like Roche, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, and others. But Alnylam also is selectively retaining rights to some drug candidates, such as ALN-TTR, a drug that targets a rare disease in which a gene mutation allows excessive amounts of amyloid proteins to build up in the body

—Pfēnex, a new San Diego biotech spun out by Dow Chemical, signed an exclusive worldwide license to Merck to use its gene expression technology to develop an undisclosed protein. Pfēnex says the deal could be worth as much as $52 million.

—Denise profiled San Diego-based BeneChill, which raised $13.5 million in venture capital in July to advance its development of a battery-powered cooling device. BeneChill wants to get its technology into the hands of emergency medical technicians, so they can provide immediate hypothermic therapy to lower the brain temperature of a person in cardiac arrest.

—At the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, San Diego’s bioTheranostics says its medical diagnostics technology passed an important test when researchers found that patients who were classified as “low-risk” were, in fact, found to have only a 4 percent chance of recurrence after a decade of follow-up. Another study showed that the bioTheranostics test also was able to predict which patients had a three-fold greater likelihood of benefitting from a standard anti-cancer therapy from Novartis, called letrozole.

—San Diego’s Cytori Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CYTX also was at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium to report interim results of patient satisfaction with its breast reconstruction technology. Cytori reported 73 percent of the patients and 82 percent of their physicians expressed satisfaction with the overall outcome six months after the procedure, according to a follow-up study of the first 32 women who were treated.

—Anesthesiologist Ahmed F. Ghouri told Denise he founded Anvita Health nine years ago out of frustration over medical prescription errors that were easily preventable. Anvita’s technology analyzes clinical data and electronic medical records (EMRs) to provide health care providers the information they need to avoid mistakes.

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Gadzooks, was this a busy news week for the biotech, devices, and healthcare IT sectors in New England. Here’s the lightning round version:

—Luke examined Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB)’s efforts to create antibody drugs that can hit two targets at once.

—Cambridge-based Parasol Therapeutics, an MIT spinoff developing treatments and diagnostics for influenza and other viruses, raised $3.2 million in debt and equity financing.

—The nonprofit firm Diagnostics for All named a new CEO: Una Ryan. the former CEO of Needham, MA-based Avant Immunotherapeutics (now Celldex Therapeutics).

—Israel-based Protalix Biotherapeutics applied for FDA approval of its drug, taliglucerase alfa, which would compete with imiglucerase (Cerezyme) from Cambridge-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ).

—Ryan got an update on Newton, MA-based LifeImage, which expects to raise more than $2.1 million in a second round of financing to further commercialization of its system for sharing medical images online.

—Luke toured the Cambridge labs of Acceleron Pharma, which is developing genetically engineered drugs to treat anemia, bone loss, and other conditions, and got a download on the company’s non-virtual business strategy.

—Waltham, MA-based MC10, a developer of stretchable silicon technology, raised $5.7 million in a new round of financing.

—Fina Technologies, a Cambridge-based spinoff of Gene Network Sciences, raised $4.5 million in a Series A round of venture capital led by Reed Elsevier Ventures and joined by Excel Venture Management.

—Biogen Idec announced the planned departure of two members of its board of directors, including the board’s chair, Bruce Ross. The open board slots could prove to be the subject of a another proxy fight between Biogen and billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

—Medical device behemoth Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) of Natick raised $2 billion in a debt financing.

—Waltham-based ImmunoGen (NASDAQ: IMGN) reported that the “smart bomb” drug for breast cancer it’s developing with partner Genentech has passed an important clinical trial; the results for the drug, T-DM1, may be good enough to allow Genentech to file for FDA approval.

—Luke talked with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals CEO John Maraganore about a treatment his company is developing for the rare disorder TTR amyloidosis.

—-Cubist Pharmaceuticals of Lexington, MA, agreed to acquire San Diego-based Calixa Therapeutics for $92.5 million upfront and up to $310 million more in potential payments.

—Waltham-based cancer diagnostics firm On-Q-ity picked up an additional $5 million for its Series A venture round from new investor Atlas Venture.

—Caliper Life Sciences (NASDAQ:CALP), a provider of research products and services in Hopkinton, MA, sold its small animal services business, Xenogen Biosciences (XenBio), to Hudson, NY-based Taconic Farms for about $11 million.

—Ryan chatted with Sylvie Gregoire, president of Lexington-based Shire Human Genetic Therapies, about how her firm, a division of UK drug giant Shire, has made inroads in the U.S. markets for Fairy and Gaucher’s diseases in the wake of Genzyme’s supply problems with drugs for those diseases.

—Biogen Idec declared its willingness to wage a proxy battle for control of the board of Facet Biotech (NASDAQ:FACT), the Redwood City, CA-based company that has been resisting Biogen’s takeover efforts.

—Newton-based PatientKeeper, a maker electronic medical record software, raised $13 million in debt and equity funds from a group including previous backers Flybridge Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and Whitney & Company.

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San Diego-based Jitterbug, the simple-to-use wireless phone and services provider, says today it has acquired MobiWatch, a startup in Waltham, MA, developing mobile personal emergency response services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Jitterbug says the deal will provide its users with personal safety services that are intuitive, reliable and deliverable through its Samsung-made clamshell cell phone, which features a simple interface and keypad that especially appeals to seniors. As we reported in March, the business operates as a subsidiary of GreatCall, co-founded by wireless pioneer Arlene Harris as an antidote to the excessive complexity of many 3G smart phones. GreatCall operates as a mobile virtual network operator, or MVNA, an independent company that provides mobile phone service but does not have its own licensed operating frequency.

GreatCall officials would not comment beyond the press release. As MassHighTech reported last year, MobiWatch was developing a fob-like Bluetooth-enabled device that a user could attach to a keychain. In an emergency, the user would push the dime-sized button on the fob, which would launch the Bluetooth connection to the user’s cell phone to call an emergency response center. An operator at the center would determine the nature of the emergency, use GPS to locate the caller’s location, and contact the appropriate authorities.

Jitterbug says it plans to further develop the MobiWatch technology before bringing it to market.

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Frazer, PA-based Cephalon (NASDAQ: CEPH) has agreed to pay $30 million for an option to acquire BioAssets Development Corporation, a Wellesley, MA-based company investigating spinal uses for existing and experimental drugs, according to a press release. Under the terms of the agreement, BioAssets will be eligible for an additional payment if Cephalon exercises the option, as well as for payments tied to regulatory and sales milestones.

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This week we had the usual mix of news on partnerships, clinical trials, and the like, as well as some fascinating in-depth discussions with key players in the life sciences arena.

—Antibiotic developer Rib-X Pharmaceuticals announced that the oral form its experimental antibiotic radezolid passed a mid-stage clinical trial as a treatment for a common form of pneumonia. The New Haven, CT, firm is looking to partner with a pharmaceutical company to help move the drug toward FDA approval.

—Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) of Cambridge, MA, won approval from European regulators to market plerixafor (Mozobil) for patients with lymphoma and multiple myeloma who need stem cell transplants. The drug helps boost the number of stem cells that can be collected from the blood for such transplant procedures.

—Altus Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALTU) of Waltham, MA, said it will need to raise more capital before the end of next month in order to continue its operations. In March, the firm reduced its staff and abandoned development of a cystic fibrosis treatment in order to focus on ALTU-238, a treatment for patients with growth hormone deficiency.

—Cambridge-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) joined forces with Vancouver’s Tekmira Pharmaceuticals (TSX:TKM) to come up with new drug-delivery particles to get RNA-interference drugs where they need to go in the body. Alnylam will fund the research and gets exclusive rights to the resultant discoveries.

—Anti-viral drug maker Idenix Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IDIX) priced a secondary public offering of 7.25 million shares at $3.14 each. The Cambridge-based firm expected to raise $21.2 million from the offer.

—Irish drug company Elan filed suit against its Cambridge-based partner, Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB), over Biogen’s objections to a deal with affiliates of health Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) that Elan announced last month. That deal focuses on … Next Page »

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There’s not one but two venture-fund closings to report this week. More below on those, and the rest of the week’s deals news from New England’s life science and tech firms.

—Hopkinton, MA-based EMC (NYSE: EMC) won a protracted bidding war with rival NetApp over software maker Data Domain. After EMC increased its offer for Santa Clara, CA-based Data Domain (NASDAQ: DDUP) to $33.50 per share, Sunnyvale, CA-based NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) announced it would bow out of the competition for control of Data Domain, a maker of tools for data deduplication. Greg got a great exclusive (as far as we can tell) interview with Kai Li, Data Domain’s co-founder and chief scientist, about the company’s technology and strategy, the future of data storage, and the implications of the EMC deal.

—Excel Venture Management of Boston closed a $125 million fund, which it intends to invest in life sciences companies poised to affect a broad range of industries, including information technology, alternative energy, agriculture, textiles, and chemistry. Luke had an interesting chat with one of the firm’s managing directors, Juan Enriquez, about its plans and some of the startups already in its portfolio.

—Fellow life sciences venture firm 5AM Ventures surpassed the $150 million target for its third fund. 5AM, which has offices in Waltham, MA, and Menlo Park, CA, pulled in $159.2 million from 34 investors.

—Bedford, MA-based Rapid Micro Biosystems raised $18.6 million in a Series A round from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, TVM Capital, Quaker BioVentures, and VIMAC Milestone Medica Fund. The startup makes technology,

—E-mail archiving firm Sonian of Dedham, MA, raised $4.1 million out of a planned $6.6 million private stock offering, according to documents filed with the SEC.

—The numbers from June, provided by our new partner, ChubbyBrain, showed that healthcare startups were attracting the most investment in Massachusetts, accounting for 9 of the 17 deals done during the month. Not a single deal in June involved cleantech or energy.

—Quincy, MA-based Modiv Media, a provider of in-store digital media tools for grocery stores, raised $1.2 million out of a planned $2.52 million financing round.

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The flow of deals from New England’s tech and life sciences companies was sluggish this week but not completely frozen. Acquisition news predominated.

—Cambridge, MA-based Charles Stark Draper Laboratory won a $146 million contract from the U.S. Navy to work on guidance systems for the Trident II nuclear missile.

—Burlington, MA-based speech technology giant Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) gave Calgary, Alberta-based Zi Corporation (NASDAQ: ZICA) until February 13 to respond to its latest takeover offer. The Canadian firm’s board has repeatedly rejected Nuance’s advances, which began last summer.

—Life sciences equipment maker Millipore (NYSE: MIL) of Billerica, MA, inked a deal to acquire Guava Technologies of Hayward, CA, for $22.6 million.

—Needham, MA-based IT technical support provider HiWired agreed to sell its assets for an undisclosed sum to Montreal-based Radialpoint, an IT security and services firm.

—Software maker mValent was picked up for another undisclosed sum by Redwood Shores, CA-based software giant Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), which plans to integrate the Waltham, MA-based firm into its Oracle Enterprise Manager business.

—Worcester, MA-based RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:RXII) forged an agreement to sell up to $25 million new shares of its common stock to YA Global Investments over the next two years. The deal calls for the developer of RNAi-based drugs to sell the stock in $500,000 increments at the lowest weighted average price of its shares over five straight trading days, less a 5-percent discount.

—Cambridge, MA-based biotechs Dyax (NASDAQ:DYAX) and Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) expanded an agreement focused on using Dyax’s “phage display” technology to discover antibody drugs for Biogen. The new deal involves 10 more product licenses for Biogen; Dyax gets a $5 million payment upfront, research funding, and up to $85 million in milestone fees, as well as royalties for each drug that Biogen commercializes under the arrangement.

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New England life sciences firms gave us a little breather on the fast-breaking news this past week, so we had some time to take a closer look at some of the most interesting new companies and projects in the field.

—Luke interviewed Tom Hughes, the CEO of Zafgen, and learned more about the startup’s plans for developing drugs that fight obesity by blocking the blood supply to fatty tissue. The next day, the Cambridge, MA-based firm, which is backed by Atlas Venture and Third Rock Ventures, announced it had inked a deal with a U.K. contract research firm called Argenta Discovery, which will aid in the development of one such drug.

—Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) agreed to pay $24.5 million for diagnostic maker Exact Sciences’ assets related to prenatal and reproductive health. In response, San Diego-based Sequenom (NASDAQ:SQNM) dropped its bid to acquire Marlborough, MA-based Exact (NASDAQ:EXAS) in an all-stock deal valued at $41 million.

—Another diagnostics maker, TheraGenetics of Cambridge, MA, and London, agreed to be acquired by UK-based Avacta Group for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock. TheraGenetics is developing tests to help predict a patient’s response to drugs for a number of neurological and psychiatric conditions.

—Dicerna Pharmaceuticals CEO Jim Jenson told Luke about his Watertown, MA-based company’s plans to find a “second doorway” into the development of drugs based on the gene-silencing technique RNA interference. By using slightly longer RNA molecules, he said, the company plans to make drugs that are more potent, longer-acting, and more customizable.

—Luke profiled NeurAxon, a startup in Waltham, MA, that’s out to stop migraine pain before it starts. This year will be a critical one for determining the efficacy of NeurAxon’s lead drug candidate, a pill that combines a triptan, a standard migraine medication, with a molecule that blocks nNOS, and enzyme involved in pain sensation.

—Lexington, MA-based cancer-drug developer Synta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SNTA) finished enrolling 630 patients in a clinical trial of its lead product candidate for melanoma that has spread through the body, and said it plans to unveils results from the study in May.

—Life sciences equipment maker Millipore (NYSE: MIL) of Billerica, MA, announced an agreement to acquire Hayward, CA-based Guava Technologies, a maker of cell-sorting and other testing devices—for $22.6 million.

—Pharmaceutical giant Merck tapped renowned Harvard cancer researcher D. Gary Gilliland to head Merck Research Labs, the Boston outpost where Merck is consolidating its oncology research operations. Gilliland will replace Stephen Friend in the role.

—Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:MIPI) announced a host of leadership changes, including dropping “interim” from CEO John Babich’s title. Babich has helmed the Cambridge, MA-based firm since September 2008, replacing former CEO David Barlow, who also resigned from the Molecular Insight’s board last month.

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This last week saw several sizeable takeover agreements (and a few smaller ones) inked. Here’s more on those and the rest of the recent deals news.

—Hopkinton, MA-based EMC’s second takeover offer for San Diego-based storage maker Iomega was evidently the charm—the firms agreed on a final price of approximately $213 million, or $3.85 per share.

—Boston- and London-based buyout firm Advent International completed raising its sixth fund, worth $10.4 billion.

—Japan’s largest drug firm, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, made a surprise $8.8 billion takeover offer for Cambridge, MA-based Millennium Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MLNM). Under the terms of the deal, Millennium will stay put in Massachusetts and so will its current CEO, Deborah Dunsire, who will run the firm as a standalone business unit of Takeda.

—Burlington, MA’s Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) cut a $363 million deal to purchase Needham, MA-based eScription, which makes speech-to-text medical dictation software.

—PowerSteering Software raised $3.5 million in new financing in a round led by MMV Financial and joined by Hudson Ventures and Advent International. The Cambridge, MA, firm’s software-as-a-service products help companies comply with the Six Sigma standards for process improvement.

—Waltham, MA-based Repligen (NASDAQ: RGEN) settled a patent suit it had filed with the University of Michigan against Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY). Under the settlement agreement, Repligen will collect an initial $5 million payment and royalties on BMS’s arthritis drug, Orencia.

—Luggage-screening firm Reveal Imaging of Bedford, MA, raised $20.3 million in a financing led by BBH Capital Partners III and joined by existing investors, including Greylock Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and Flybridge Capital Partners.

—In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, made a strategic investment in QD Vision of Watertown, MA. The Massachusetts firm is using MIT-developed “quantum dot” technology to build next-generation LEDs.

—North Andover, MA’s TouchStone Software—which provides users with a database of drivers for PC peripherals—agreed to be acquired by Phoenix Technologies of Milpitas, CA, for about $18 million.

—Bankrupt medical-device firm Diomed (AMEX: DIO) of Andover, MA, plans to sell its U.S. operations and some of its U.K. assets to AngioDynamics of Queensbury, NY, for $11 million. The deal comes instead of an earlier plan to sell out to the German firm Biolitec.

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Looks like somebody misread the memo about Evacuation Day and decided yesterday was Acquisition Day here in the greater Boston area. (Although Axcelis Technologies made no such mistake.)

First, there was the whopping $800 million that Lexington, MA’s BladeLogic (NASDAQ: BLOG) announced it will make in a buy-out by Houston, TX-based BMC Software (NYSE: BMC). BladeLogic, a data-center-automation firm, is no stranger to big exits; its $67 million IPO was the eighth biggest debut for a Massachusetts firm last year. And if this year’s acquisitions wind up looking anything like last year’s, BladeLogic could handily take first place in that category. “Organizations around the world will spend more than $140 billion dollars this year running data centers,” BMC CEO Bob Beauchamp in an announcement describing the $28-per-share deal. “Automation is the only way IT can bring this spending under control and still meet the reliability and time-to-market requirements of their businesses.”

Another local software firm, Teragram of Cambridge, MA, was also acquired yesterday, by Cary, NC, business-intelligence giant SAS. Founded in 1997 by two scientists from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories and now 40 people strong, Teragram makes a host of natural language processing tools for the likes of CNN, Forbes.com, NYTimes Digital, Sony, WashingtonPost.com, Wolters Kluwer, the World Bank, and Yahoo. SAS plans to integrate Teragram’s technology with its own text mining and business intelligence tools. The firms did not disclose terms of the deal, except to say that Teragram will operate as an SAS company.

Hopkinton, MA-based EMC (NYSE: EMC), meanwhile, got a second chance to add another acquisition of its own. San Diego-based Iomega (NYSE: IOM) announced yesterday that it’s now prepared to enter into discussions with EMC after the Massachusetts firm sweetened its offer for the California storage firm to about $205.5 million. Iomega last week rejected EMC’s initial $180 million offer as too low and not any better than a stock-purchase agreement that Iomega had made late last year with companies registered in China and the Cayman Islands. Iomega said in a press release that the new offer “would reasonably constitute a superior proposal,” though it cautioned that EMC’s acquisition proposal was not binding and subject to due diligence. For EMC’s part, says director of corporate public relations Dave Farmer, “we’re encouraged by Iomega’s decision to move ahead with EMC discussions, and look forward to next steps.”

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Cambridge, MA-based e-commerce firm Art Technology Group (NASDAQ: ARTG) will acquire Seattle’s CleverSet for some $10 million in cash, not counting closing adjustments. CleverSet’s technology for automated personalization recommendations can be used for retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, financial services, travel and hospitality, and other applications, according to the announcement.

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As part of a previously announced restructuring effort, Natick, MA-based Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) has agreed to sell two of its businesses to private equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $425 million in cash. With this deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of next year, “We now have under agreement the divestitures of all five non-strategic businesses we had previously identified for sale,” said Boston Scientific president and CEO Jim Tobin in a statement.

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Waltham, MA-based Inverness Medical Innovations (AMEX: IMA) has agreed to pay $170 million in stock for BBI Holdings, a UK company that specializes in lateral-flow tests, such as those used for fertility monitoring or pregnancy tests. Inverness has been on buying spree, which appears likely to continue.

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