This week in New England we’ve seen financings and data updates from drug developers, as well as an acquisition in the life sciences tools space.

—An SEC filing revealed that New Haven, CT-based BioRelix has brought in $3.6 million in new funding, as part of a round that could hit $5.3 million. The company is developing antibiotics against RNA drug targets known as RiboSwitches.

—Waltham, MA-based Syndax Pharmaceuticals has reported that its lead drug had performed well in a Phase 2 breast cancer trial. Syndax had previously reported positive data of the drug, entinostat, in a lung cancer trial two months ago, and reported the breast cancer data at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Breast Cancer Symposium this week.

—Cambridge, MA-based Aura Biosciences raised $4.5 million in financing, bringing the company’s total funding pot to $10 million in two years of operating. The startup, which develops tiny protein cells for delivering cancer drugs directly into tumors, has not named the specific investors in the round, but noted they are individuals who are pharmaceutical industry CEOs or entrepreneurs. The nano-particles look like viruses but are engineered to prevent the triggering of dangerous immune reactions.

—Caliper Life Sciences (NASDAQ: CALP) of Hopkinton, MA, will be bought by Waltham-based PerkinElmer for $600 million in cash, at $10.50 per share. Caliper makes imaging and detection technology.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

[Updated 8/15/11 8:00 am. See below.] In mid-July, Cambridge, MA-based Cerulean Pharma began a new clinical trial of its cancer drug CRLX101, which is a “nanoparticle”—a powerful chemical wrapped in a tiny package that can burrow its way into cancer cells and kill them. Cerulean is one of a handful of companies laboring to apply nanotechnology to drug delivery. The trial, which will involve 150 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, should shed some light on the potential of nano-drugs in the cancer setting when top line results are released next year.

But CEO Oliver Fetzer isn’t waiting for proof that Cerulean’s approach works. He’s so optimistic that he has already set his sights on a big new opportunity for the company’s tiny drug platform: RNA interference (RNAi). About a decade ago, the pharmaceutical industry started pouring research dollars into RNAi—a new method for shutting off disease-causing genes and proteins. But there was a problem. “If you just inject RNA into the patient, enzymes degrade it very quickly,” Fetzer told Xconomy in a recent sit-down interview. So last year, Cerulean started testing its nanoparticles to see if they might offer a better way to deliver RNAi therapeutics.

Cerulean isn’t the only company to spot an opportunity for nanoparticles in RNAi. On July 25, Cambridge-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY)—one of the pioneers in RNAi—announced that it and its collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered novel nanoparticles that might facilitate the delivery of RNAi drugs directly into cells. Alnylam is developing RNAi approaches for several diseases, including cancer.

The difficulty of translating the promise of RNAi into drugs has been a major downer for the field. Last November, Swiss drug giant Roche unexpectedly pulled the plug on its RNAi program, which included ending a research alliance with Alnylam that once had the potential to earn the Cambridge company … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

[Corrected 5/12/11, 9:00 am. See below.] The sample packets of the anti-nausea drug that are strewn across the desk of Mark Schobel, CEO of MonoSol Rx, don’t look anything like your standard pharmaceutical product. Each dose of the drug, called ondansetron (Zuplenz)—which is prescribed to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and other harsh treatments—is a small, thin piece of film that’s packaged in its own plastic packet. A patient can slip the film in his mouth and it will dissolve in seconds, with no need for water.

MonoSol Rx’s drug-delivery technology, called PharmFilm, is reminiscent of Johnson & Johnson’s popular breath freshener Listerine PocketPaks, except that MonSol Rx’s films have a much more valuable payload: They deliver precise doses of prescription drugs. MonoSol Rx’s business plan is built on the idea that patients would rather let a film dissolve on their tongues or cheeks than have to swallow a pill or take an injection. “We are taking drugs to the next level,” Schobel says. “It’s about convenience, ease of administration, portability—making medication a non-event.”

MonoSol Rx’s version of ondansetron, which was developed in conjunction with two European drug companies and approved by the FDA in July 2010, became the Warren, NJ-based firm’s first marketed product. It helped the tiny pharma company reach a milestone in the fourth quarter of last year: profitability. Now MonoSol Rx is bringing its film into entirely new markets, including diabetes, where it hopes to be the first company to successfully make oral insulin—long the holy grail of the pharmaceutical industry.

MonoSol Rx was spun off from Merillville, IN-based materials maker MonoSol in 2004, and it began engineering a polymer-based, edible film that could dole out uniform doses of medicine. The company secured more than 20 patents covering everything from the composition of the film to the flavoring that’s used to mask medicines’ often bitter tastes. Some MonoSol Rx films dissolve quickly on or under the tongue, while others stick to the inside of the cheek, delivering a drug dosage over a longer period of time.

The company’s journey from a research-based organization to commercial success was far from smooth. After raising $36 million privately in 2006, MonoSol Rx attempted an initial public offering in 2007. But like so many small pharma companies trying to go public in a difficult market, it was forced to abandon its Wall Street dream. “It was a terrible market,” recalls Schobel, adding that the company had to cut its employee count from 100 to 75 and raise debt so it could continue on its development path.

Last year was a banner one for MonoSol Rx. Just six weeks after Zuplenz was approved, the FDA gave the green light to a film combining the drugs buprenorphine and naloxone—a treatment for opioid dependence that MonoSol Rx developed with Richmond, VA-based Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals, which markets the drug as Suboxone Film.

A spokesperson for Reckitt Benckiser says that in under a year on the market, the film product has captured 37.5 percent of total sales of buprenorphine, which is also available as a dissolving tablet. The film formulation, the spokesperson says, dissolves twice as fast as the tablet. Additionally, she says, it helps lessen public concerns that children … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) has found another partner to help it deliver its gene-silencing drugs to tissues deep in the body. Precision NanoSystems, of Vancouver, British Columbia, has agreed to lend Alnylam its expertise in using its so-called small lipid nanoparticles to potentially deliver RNA-interference (RNAi) drugs, the companies said today. The tiny particles could help advance Alnylam’s gene-silencing drugs through the liver, which has proved a difficult barrier to homing in on tissues deeper in the body with such treatments.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (NYSE: KKR) will purchase Pfizer’s Capsugel unit for $2.375 billion in cash, according to a statement from Pfizer (NYSE: PFE). Capsugel, which manufactures hard capsules and other drug-delivery systems, generated $750 million in sales last year, making it the world’s leading capsule maker, Pfizer says. The Peapack, NJ-based Capsugel has invented several capsules that can deliver a wide range of doses and formulations of drugs and nutritional supplements. “Capsugel has an excellent portfolio and outstanding reputation for providing high-quality, innovative drug-delivery solutions,” said Henry Kravis and George Roberts, co-founders and co-CEOs of KKR, in the statement.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) has been working with Tekmira Pharmaceuticals (TSE:TKM) of Vancouver, BC, since at least 2006 on getting its gene-silencing drugs into cells to treat diseases. But the partnership has gone sour. Tekmira has filed a lawsuit that is seeking what could amount to more than $1 billion from Alnylam.

Alnylam, founded in 2002, has been a leader in technology that uses RNA molecules to silence certain disease-related genes. While these drugs hold promise because of their ability to specifically target genes in ways other drugs can’t, the new RNA medicines require special help so they can be effectively delivered to the right place in cells. Alnylam has relied heavily on partners such as Tekmira, which has developed particles to carry gene-silencing compounds in the bloodstream and deliver them to the desired cells. Tekmira, for example, provides the carrier particles (a.k.a lipid nanoparticles) that Alnylam uses for its key experimental drugs for liver cancer (ALN-VSP) and TTR-mediated amyloidosis (ALN-TTR). Tekmira has received more than $45 million in funding from Alnylam through the companies’ partnership activities, and Tekmira stands to gain more money from Alnylam’s potential sales of drugs that use Tekmira’s technology, according to the companies.

Alnylam has filed patents on new carrier particles for RNAi drugs, listing Alnylam scientists as the inventors, according to Alan Carr, a biotech analyst at Needham & Company, who covers Alnylam’s stock. Presumably, if these patents are awarded, Alnylam wouldn’t have to pay Tekmira to develop drugs with particles invented by Alnylam scientists. Yet in its complaint filed this week in the Business Litigation Session of the Massachusetts Superior Court, Tekmira “alleges that Alnylam is claiming … that Alnylam has developed novel siRNA delivery formulations and lipids that can be obtained from Alnylam instead of Tekmira. Tekmira … alleges… that these purported Alnylam formulations and lipids are actually based on, and in whole or in part developed from Tekmira’s technology.”

“It comes down to inventorship on some patent applications filed by Alnylam,” Carr said. “And Tekmira believes that they contributed to it and that they should have at least partial ownership of it.”

Tekmira announced its litigation against Alnylam after the close of the market on Wednesday. At the close of the mark on Thursday, Tekmira’s shares were down about 10 percent to $3.96 and Alnylam’s shares fell almost 3 percent percent to $9.86. Tekmira has a lot at stake in this case, given how much of its future revenue depends on income from its drug-delivery technology through partners like Alnylam. In addition to Tekmira, Alnylam has worked on methods of delivering its gene-silencing treatments with AlCana Technologies, The University of British Columbia, and MIT.

Come back to Xconomy for my colleague Luke Timmerman’s upcoming interview with Alnylam chief executive John Maraganore about this litigation involving Tekmira. Also, here’s Luke’s previous report about this litigation from earlier this week. Tekmira’s complaint can be downloaded from this page on its website.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

Enlight Biosciences, a Boston-based maker of drug discovery and development technologies, said today it has formed a new company called Entrega, which focuses on oral drug-delivery techniques. Entrega is working on developing orally-available versions of several types of biologic drugs (a class that includes insulin and antibodies) that are made by Enlight’s pharmaceutical partners and typically require injection. Entrega will receive an undisclosed amount of upfront and research milestone payments from its partners. The company, whose scientific advisory board is chaired by biotech entrepreneur and MIT professor Robert Langer, said it will remain independent and retain all rights to its platform technology. Enlight Biosciences started in 2008 as a collaboration between Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, and Boston-based PureTech Ventures. The firm has since forged partnerships with Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Abbott Laboratories.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

It’s a big day for a local MIT spinoff. Cambridge, MA-based Semprus BioSciences said it has closed $18 million in Series B equity financing, led by new investors SR One (the venture capital arm of drug giant GlaxoSmithKline) and Foundation Medical Partners. Existing investors 5AM Ventures and Pangaea Ventures also participated in the round, which brings Semprus’s total equity financing to $28.5 million. The company has also raised $2.5 million in U.S. government funding since 2008.

Semprus spun out of MIT biotech inventor Bob Langer’s lab in 2007, and was previously called SteriCoat. As my colleague Ryan has reported, the startup is developing surface technologies for medical devices that can help prevent infections or unhealthy blood clots, or promote tissue regeneration. Semprus is led by CEO David Lucchino, who was previously a senior associate with Polaris Venture Partners and a co-founder of biomedical investment firm LaunchCyte.

Surface and coating technologies for medical devices are a big business. Among its first applications, Semprus is making anti-microbial technology for catheters that uses surface chemistry techniques to make it hard for bacteria, fungus, platelets, or blood proteins to stick to the device and cause complications.

In the future, the company says, its technology could be used in orthopedic joint implants, hernia meshes, and pacemakers. And, particularly with GSK’s new investment, next-generation drug delivery devices could be on the horizon.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Beverly, MA-based SmartCells has kept a relatively low profile since it was founded seven years ago, quietly working on a potential blockbuster drug for diabetes with technology from MIT. But yesterday the drug giant Merck (NASDAQ:MRK) made headlines with its plans to buy the biotech startup for upfront and potential milestone payments of more than $500 million.

Todd Zion, the co-founder and CEO of SmartCells, talked to Xconomy hours after the big deal was announced, and he reflected on what seems to be the less-traveled path that his startup has taken. It might have made all the difference. (Read on for what the CEO plans to do after his firm has transferred its technology to Merck.)

This deal represents an unusually big payday to the founding team of a biotech startup, because SmartCells never sold any shares in the startup to venture capital firms. It’s also somewhat of a surprise to those of us in the media, because Zion has never tried to generate hype in the press about the potential benefits of its lead drug, a formulation of insulin that could provide greater convenience and control over blood sugar for patients with diabetes.

Rather, SmartCells has raised just $9.8 million in equity investments from angel groups and individuals since the firm got going with a Series A funding round in 2004, Zion said. Its most recent round of financing was a $4.1 million Series D round in June from Boston Harbor Angels, Angel Healthcare Investors, Beacon Street Angels, Cherrystone Angels and members of Common Angels. In fact, the firm has received more money via grants from the National Institutes of Health than it has from private investors, the CEO said.

“We’ve always had a philosophy here that we let our operating plan dictate our financing plan and not the other way around,” Zion says. “It made more sense to us to raise the amount of dollars we needed from these individual investors.”

For one, the startup wanted to avoid raising more money than it needed to enable its team to retain a significant share of ownership in the firm, Zion says. Merck’s upfront payment in the acquisition deal … Next Page »

Comments (5) | Reprints | Share:          

RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII), a Worcester, MA-based developer of RNA interference treatments, said today it will collaborate with Waltham, MA-based EyeGate Pharma to deliver RNAi therapeutics to the eye for retinal disorders. Financial details weren’t given, but the partnership combines EyeGate’s expertise in delivering drugs into the eye non-invasively with RXi’s technology and resources in RNAi drugs and delivery methods. EyeGate raised a round of equity financing last December, while RXi appointed a new CEO, Noah Beerman, in November and raised $16.2 million in a stock sale in March 2010.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

(Updated—6:15 pm ET, 6/01/10) Follica has raised more money for its quest against hair follicle disorders like male pattern baldness. The biotech startup, which is developing drugs that could spur the formation of new hair follicles, has raised $7.5 million in equity financing, according to an SEC filing.

Daphne Zohar, a Follica co-founder and managing director at PureTech Ventures in Boston, says the funding mentioned in the SEC filing is part of the startup’s Series B round of funding. The new cash came from Follica’s previous backers, which include PureTech, InterWest Partners, of Menlo Park, CA, and Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners. The Series B round was initially announced as an $11 million financing back in 2008, but Zohar says that was not the actual amount raised at the time and this latest infusion of capital brings the total round to $13 million. (Editor’s note: this paragraph was changed from the originally published version to include additional details from Zohar about the total amount raised in Follica’s second round of financing.)

“The investors are pleased,” Zohar said. “Things are going really well—it’s really exciting.”

Exactly how much progress Follica has made in developing a new hair-loss therapy, or whether baldness is the number-one target in its pipeline, Zohar wouldn’t say. The policy of the firm, she said, has been not to comment in detail on R&D activities. (Here’s an update on the firm’s status that Xconomy posted back in January.)

I did learn from Zohar that the company’s headquarters are now in Mendham, NJ, and have been since drug industry veteran William Ju took over as the firm’s CEO last year. Yet the firm continues to conduct drug-delivery and device research as well as corporate development in Boston, she said. Ju was not immediately available for comment this afternoon.

Unfortunately, this funding news doesn’t provide any new clues about whether Follica is much closer to bringing to market a treatment for baldness. Judging from the frenzy of interest in our previous Follica posts, it’s clear that many people are excited about the firm’s approach of generating new follicles to grow shoots of hair. Its technology, which is licensed from the University of Pennsylvania, could also be used to deliver permanent removal of unwanted hair.

If anything, we could hold out hope that more money for Follica means it has a greater chance of advancing its much-anticipated treatments for hair loss.

Comments (29) | Reprints | Share:          

Looks like life sciences companies reclaimed their territory in our headlines this week. We saw news of funding deals, acquisitions, and layoffs, and profiles on drugmakers and device developers.

—Rockland, MA-based BioSphere Medical (NASDAQ: BSMD), which makes bio-engineered microspheres to be injected to cut off the blood supply to tumors, vascular malformations, and uterine fibroids, announced it will be acquired by Merit Medical Systems (NASDAQ: MMSI) for $96 million in cash .

—Luke wrote about the gravity surrounding Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ clinical trial for its hepatitis C drug, telaprevir. Vertex (NASDAQ: VRTX) is waiting for results from Phase III of the study, the final stage of testing required before the drug gets approved by the FDA for sale in the U.S. Telaprevir could be a first-in-class protease inhibitor drug, and has shown that it can double the cure rate and cut the standard course of treatment in half for the chronic liver-damaging disease.

—Stemgent, a provider of consumable stem cell research materials that has offices in Cambridge, MA, and San Diego, has raised $5.6 million of a planned $10.1 million equity round, according to an SEC filing.

—Cambridge Endoscopic Devices, a Framingham, MA-based maker of laparoscopic instruments for minimally invasive procedures, pulled in $3 million of a $7.5 million round of equity-based funding, a regulatory document showed.

—Cambridge-based genetic analysis technology developer Helicos BioSciences announced cutting 40 jobs, halving its work force in order to reduce operating expenses. Helicos (NASDAQ: HLCS) had $11.3 million in the bank as of March 31, but needs to raise “significant additional capital” before the end of June to fund its operations for another year, it revealed in a quarterly financial statement filed this week.

—Pfizer announced it would be cutting 300 manufacturing jobs at its Andover, MA-based site by the end of 2015, as part of a restructuring plan following the drugmaker’s acquisition of Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) last year. The company is … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

MIT’s famously inventive bioengineering professor, Bob Langer, is lending his expertise to yet another fledgling biotech company. Boston-based Kala Pharmaceuticals, which lists Langer on its board of directors, has secured a $2 million equity financing, according to a regulatory filing.

Kala doesn’t have a website, and I haven’t been able to find any public statements that offer clues on what it is aiming to accomplish. But the filing lists three directors: Robert Paull of New York-based Lux Capital; Justin Hanes, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University; and Langer. The head office is at the Boston law firm of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo, according to the filing. There are 10 investors in the company so far, although they aren’t named in the filing. Paull is the founding CEO, and an investor, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“We appreciate the interest and very prompt outreach. We’re not disclosing anything about the company yet,” Paull said in an e-mail when I asked him for comment about the company.

While I can’t say for sure what Kala is all about, the connections between these founders are clear. Hanes goes a long way back with Langer. Hanes got his doctorate in chemical engineering from MIT in 1996, and he co-authored a number of scientific papers with the famous professor in the mid-to-late 1990s, according to his curriculum vitae. Hanes lists his research interests as gene therapy, cancer immunotherapy, pulmonary lung delivery, and hydrogel BIOMEMS devices.

New York-based Lux Capital, where Paull is a co-founder and managing partner, has made connections with some of the more intriguing biotechs in the Boston area, including Cambridge, MA-based Genocea Biosciences, a vaccine developer, and Cambridge, MA-based Cerulean Pharma, a drug developer. Langer serves on the board of Cerulean, while Paull is a board observer.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

5AM Ventures, a life sciences-focused early stage venture capital firm, has surpassed its $150 million target for its third fund, reports PE Hub. An SEC filing that indicates 5AM, which has offices in Waltham, MA, and Menlo Park, CA, has raised $159.2 million from 34 investors. Companies in the firm’s portfolio include Pulmatrix, a Lexington, MA-based startup developing an aerosol treatment for flu other pathogens, and Cambridge, MA-based Semprus BioSciences, which is making polymers that bond to the surface of medical devices to prevent clots and infections and to promote healing.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

More clues about stealthy drug-delivery startup Entra Pharmaceuticals surfaced yesterday on Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner’s blog. It turns out that the technical whizzes behind Entra are Yet-Ming Chiang, an MIT engineering professor and founder of Watertown, MA-based advanced battery developer A123Systems, and Michael Cima, another MIT engineering professor, who is a co-founder of life sciences firms such as drug-delivery and biosensing company MicroCHIPS and mystery startup Certus Biomedical.

Kirsner does a nice job piecing together what’s brewing at Entra. True to the two founders’ backgrounds, Entra is developing a drug-delivery device that involves electronics, Kirsner writes. Cima tells him that he calls the device the “patch pump,” and it’s intended to be an inexpensive and disposable product. Kirsner also learned that the startup, which is operating in incubator space at the Boston University Photonics Center, is developing a drug. But the founders weren’t willing to part with details such as which specific disease or diseases the drug and device are intended to treat (other than telling Kirsner that diabetes isn’t one of them.)

It was widely reported in December that Entra had landed $4.2 million in a Series A round of financing from Boston venture firm Flybridge Capital Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners in Waltham, MA, and that the round could swell to $12.5 million this year if the startup reaches certain goals. Flybridge general partner Michael Greeley and North Bridge’s Jeffrey McCarthy are on the board at Entra, according to Kirsner. The startup has also hired a team of executives, including Frank Bobe, a former chief business officer at Alseres Pharmaceuticals, to be its CEO.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

The big challenge in the field of RNA interference drugs is with how to deliver them effectively through the body. Now scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School are reporting today in Nature they have come up with an oral pill form of this gene-silencing approach, which passed an early test in mice.

If this technology can show the same kind of effect in people—always a big if—then it could be a boon to Worcester, MA-based RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII), which has an exclusive license to the technology. The senior author of the paper is Michael Czech, a researcher at UMass Medical School, and co-founder and scientific adviser to RXi.

The problem of how to deliver RNA interference drugs has been around since the technique was co-discovered a decade ago by another one of RXi’s founders, UMass researcher and Nobel Laureate Craig Mello. These drugs are thought to have the advantage of being able to specifically hit targets on cells that other drugs can’t, and to get at the genetic root cause of disease. The problem is that small interfering RNA drugs can get chewed up by enzymes in the body, or flushed through the kidneys long before they ever get to the diseased cells. Some leading RNAi companies, like Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) have tried to work around this with locally-delivered drugs that don’t have to circulate through the body, or with lipid nanoparticle capsules designed to protect the drug in the body until it gets to the diseased cells.

Czech’s technique to avoid this problem, as I first explained in this November feature, is to package an RNA interference molecule with a beta-glucan particle in an oral pill that disguises it to look like yeast to the body. Once the package goes through the digestive tract, surviving stomach acids, it encounters transporter proteins in the lining of the gut that carry it across the tissue membrane, where it comes into contact with macrophage cells. These cells, which play a role in inflammation, gobble up the cloaked form of the drug, which can then send signals internally to decrease activation of the macrophages.

“Oral administration of RNAi therapeutics using this particular technology is a major scientific breakthrough that was not previously thought practical,” said Tod Woolf, RXi’s CEO, in a statement. “It now appears that this method may constitute a significant advance in RNAi delivery.”

Czech and his colleagues showed that they could silence a gene for TNF alpha, an inflammatory protein that plays a role in autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, and is the target of multi-billion dollar drugs like Amgen’s etanercept (Enbrel) and Abbott Laboratories’ adalimumab (Humira).

The research was paid for by the National Institutes of Health and UMass Medical Center.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

[Updated Feb. 26, 2009---Clarifies and corrects terms of Pacira's financing. See details below.]

San Diego-based Pacira Pharmaceuticals, which got a final $10 million installment of a venture capital commitment just a few months ago, laid off about 40 employees last week. Pacira CEO David Stack, who also is a managing director in the Boston office of MPM Capital, told me today the layoffs became necessary after a setback in the company’s clinical trial of a new drug delivery product for treating post-surgical pain.

The staff reductions represent about 36 percent of Pacira’s workforce. The latest round of cuts followed 18 layoffs in December, which has enabled Pacira to reduce its burn rate and use the company’s available resources to conduct another, more-focused evaluation of their latest product, Stack says. He described results of the latest trial as confusing, saying, “We think we can redo them in relatively short order.”

Pacira said in January it had completed enrollment in two pivotal Phase 3 trials to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of its version of the painkiller bupivacaine that uses the company’s proprietary sustained-release technology, which is designed to make drugs last longer in the body. Pacira already has approved and commercialized products based on its injectable, sustained-release technologies, known as DepoFoam and Biosphere. By encapsulating bupivacaine, a commonly used analgesic, Pacira said it hopes to extend the effective dose of the pain-killer from 6-8 hours to several days.

The cutbacks leave Pacira with almost 70 employees. Stack told me the staff cutbacks were necessitated at least partly because capital markets are hamstrung and the market for IPOs has been basically closed for more than a year. “It’s tough stuff, but it’s the only way to extend our available resources,” he says. An update to Xconomy’s San Diego layoff tracker is here.

Pacira, which has operations in San Diego and New Jersey, is a drug-delivery company that specializes in injectable, controlled-release technology developed in San Diego more than a decade ago by DepoTech. UK-based SkyePharma acquired the startup in 1998 in a deal that was then valued up to $56.2 million. A syndicate of venture capital firms acquired the business from SkyePharma almost two years ago, and renamed the company Pacira. Backers include MPM Capital, HBM BioVentures, OrbiMed Advisors, and Sanderling Ventures.

[Note: Pacira CFO Jim Scibetta tells me that Pacira did not raise $85 million recently, as previously reported, nor was there a previous $30 million investment by the venture syndicate in the company. Rather, the venture investors committed $85 million when they bought the company from SkyePharma. "We’ve not disclosed how much of that went to Skye and specifically how it was tranched," Scibetta says, "but it was all disbursed between the March 2007 acquisition date and October 2008."]

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

When renowned MIT professor (and Xconomist) Bob Langer spoke last month at our Xconomy Forum on building life sciences companies—a task at which he has been exceedingly successful—we weren’t expecting him to mention that he has struggled for some eight years to raise money to study “hurricane mitigation.”

It turns out that Langer—a chemical engineer whose inventions primarily in the realm of drug delivery and medical devices have led to more than 600 issued or pending patents and over 200 licenses to companies—has been involved in the field of weather modification since the late 1990s. And though he acknowledges that this hasn’t been one of his main focuses, he has contributed ideas about how to weaken the destructive force of hurricanes and even has spent his own money to fund research on the problem at MIT.

“Any idea that I feel will improve peoples’ lives is something I want to do,” Langer says. “It’s hard for me to understand why more people don’t work in this area, not that I’m any expert.”

Langer says he believes hurricane mitigation is a chemical engineering problem. Hurricanes draw energy from the heat of evaporated seawater, gaining power as they move over tropical oceans, often not slowing down until they hit land—and devastate populated coastal areas in the process. Langer is thinking about ways to interfere with the energy transferred from the ocean up to the hurricane. It’s a tough nut to crack, however.

His initial idea was to spread a biodegradable substance over the ocean and in front of hurricanes, hypothesizing that the substance would limit the energy transfer from the water to the storm. Indeed, the Boston Globe in 1999 chronicled how Langer and the late famed cancer researcher Judah Folkman first discussed this idea after the two collaborated to solve a routine clinical problem: how to cool the uncomfortable heat that casts generate as they harden on patients. They fixed that problem by adding a chemical called urea, according to the Globe article, and the solution prompted the pair of biomedical research luminaries to discuss how much of the chemical would be needed to weaken a hurricane.

A few weeks ago Langer put me in touch with Moshe Alamaro, an MIT engineer who has led the hurricane-modification research that Langer has supported financially and scientifically. In a wind-wave tank that simulates hurricane environments, Alamaro has tested the use of a substance such as Langer proposed to prevent the evaporation that feeds the storms, but he discovered several years ago that typical wind near the storm would mix the substance into the water and limit its utility, according to a paper he co-wrote in the Journal of Weather Modification in 2006. (Alamaro’s personal Web site includes links to several papers and articles about the 60-odd-year effort of scientists to reduce the impact of hurricanes.)

Alamaro says that he has submitted a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to continue his hurricane research. (He and atmospheric scientist Ross Hoffman have proposed to drop carbon particles from cargo planes onto the top of hurricanes’ cool ceilings, with the intent of the particles heating up under the sun and interrupting the normal flow of energy in the storms.) Langer says that his past efforts to raise money from the government for hurricane mitigation research have been unsuccessful, and Alamaro notes that there are still public perception hurdles to gaining federal dollars for this work.

To hear Alamaro talk about it, the field of weather modification has plenty of detractors. He notes that changing the course of hurricanes can cause the storms to hit areas that would have been otherwise left unaffected by them, and such actions come with obvious legal ramifications. He says he has also received death threats. “You must understand something about weather modification: one man’s blessing is another man’s curse,” Alamaro says.

Still, Langer and Alamaro believe that the overall impact of reducing the ferocity of hurricanes would have a net benefit for humanity. Langer equates the mitigation of hurricanes to treating diseases. “If you catch cancer early enough you may be able to stop it, and I think that is true with a lot of diseases,” he says. “I think the same thing is probably true with hurricanes.”

Comments | Reprints | Share: