Deals news this week spanned the cleantech, IT, and life sciences fields, and involved startup financing, acquisitions, and new company launches.

—Boston-based energy management firm EnerNOC (NASDAQ: ENOC) announced it had bought M2M Communications, a Boise, ID-based wireless technology company that works with energy utilities in the Midwest and California. EnerNOC said it paid $30 million at the close of the deal, with another $3.3 million paid “as a result of M2M having a positive capitalization amount at closing,” and that the transaction was a mix of cash and common stock.

—Stromedix, a Cambridge, MA-based developer of treatments for fighting organ failure, pinned down $2 million of a debt-based offering that could total $15.5 million, an SEC filing showed.

—H3 Biomedicine, a new oncology research and development firm, announced it was setting up shop in Cambridge, with funding from the U.S. unit of the Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai. H3, whose scientific founders come from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, said it will get up to $200 million in research funding from Eisai, access to the company’s drug development resources, and support for the clinical development of its drug programs.

—Boston-based CloudTP, a firm that aims to take enterprise-level computing to private cloud infrastructures, announced its official launch. The company has $1 million in equity-based seed funding from the Greylock Discovery Fund, John Littlechild of HealthCare Ventures, and three other undisclosed angel investors. The firm also pinned down a $500,000 line of credit from Silicon Valley Bank, and has a customer that could potentially provide $3 million in a debt-based investment, CloudTP founder and CEO Chris Greendale says.

—Alexion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALXN) announced it had bought Cambridge-based Taligen Therapeutics for $111 million, with potentially more money to come in the future. The deal gives Cheshire, CT-based Alexion the experimental drug TT30, which Taligen had been developing as a potential rival to Alexion’s drug eculizumab (Soliris) for a rare blood disease. Eculizumab hit the market in 2007 and is Alexion’s sole product on the market to date.

—Sanofi-Aventis advanced in its pursuit to take over Cambridge-based Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ). On Monday Genzyme said it would open up its books to let France’s Sanofi conduct due diligence, and sources told the New York Times that the deal might close within the next week or so. The Boston Globe reported on Tuesday that Sanofi had agreed to up its $18.5 billion ($69 per share) offer, which Genzyme previously said undervalued the company’s pipeline of drugs, by an unspecified amount.

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Stromedix, a Cambridge, MA-based developer of treatments for a cause of organ failure known as fibrosis, has raised $2 million of a prosposed $15.5 million round of debt financing, according to an SEC filing. The company, founded in 2007, has previously raised $29.4 million from investors including Atlas Venture, Bessemer Venture Partners, Red Abbey Venture Partners, New Leaf Venture Partners, and Frazier Healthcare Ventures. The company’s CEO, Michael Gilman, said in an e-mail that he was not able to be interviewed about the new financing today.

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We saw a number of lesser-known New England-area biotechs surface with funding announcements, as well as feature stories looking at company strategies and drug development trends.

—Inverness Medical Innovations, a Waltham, MA-based maker of consumer diagnostic tests and disease management tools, announced it had changed its name to Alere, and shifted its stock symbol on the NYSE from “IMA” to “ALR.”

—Brighton, MA-based drugmaker Surface Logix raised $4 million of a round of equity, options, and warrants that could total $4.6 million. The startup is working on treatments for obesity and diabetes, and was founded with technology from Harvard chemist George Whitesides in 2001.

—-Lexington, MA-based Taris Biomedical, a spinoff company from MIT making a drug-device combination treatment for bladder conditions, announced it had hired Sarma Duddu as its president and CEO. Duddu comes from Cima Labs, a subsidiary of the Frazer, PA-based drugmaker Cephalon (NASDAQ: CEPH).

—Ryan took a look at Cambridge, MA-based Stromedix, a biotech company that is developing drugs to target the process, called fibrosis, that causes patient’s bodies to reject transplanted kidneys. The drug, STX-100, is licensed from Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB), and was originally projected to hit a mid-stage clinical trial by this point, but has been delayed a bit. Stromedix CEO Michael Gilman told Ryan he expects the FDA will let the kidney fibrosis study advance next year, and the firm has already gotten the regulatory green-light to begin mid-stage clinical trials of its treatment for a lung disease called ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

—DiagnosisONE, a Nashua NH-based provider of software for clinical-decision support, raised $5 million from Edison Venture Fund, to put … Next Page »

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Cambridge, MA-based Stromedix is behind schedule on developing drugs that could stymie a cellular process that causes peoples’ bodies to transplanted kidneys to fail. Yet schedule delays are common in the unpredictable biotech business, and we’re only hearing about this one because of the candid nature of its co-founder and CEO, Michael Gilman.

When Stromedix closed its $25 million Series B funding round in April 2008, Gilman told Xconomy he wanted to be well into a mid-stage clinical trial of the firm’s lead drug for interstitial fibrosis in kidney transplant recipients by this point in 2010. However, the FDA has concerns about the safety of how the drug works in those patients, and Gilman and his startup now find themselves more than a year behind in their development plan.

The company’s drug, STX-100, is a therapeutic antibody licensed from the Weston, MA-based biotech giant Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB), where Gilman used to be a research executive. The antibody targets molecules linked to a cellular process called fibrosis, which causes organs to form scar tissues and ultimately fail. While fibrosis is common among all organ failures, Stromedix initially targeted kidney transplant patients because they are easily identified compared with other victims of fibrosis, and there’s a great need for ways to help them keep their new kidneys functioning for as long as possible.

Fibrosis is also a leading cause of peoples’ heart tissues to fail, something that hit close to home for Gilman last year. The 55-year-old CEO got an aortic valve replacement in November 2009 that sidelined him for six or seven weeks, he says. “I feel … Next Page »

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Stromedix, a Cambridge, MA-based biotech company, said it has received a U.S. patent that protects its lead drug for fibrosis, STX-100. The patent, U.S. 7,465,449, covers high-affinity monoclonal antibodies and antigen-binding fragments that block a target on cells that is an important regulator of fibrosis and tissue injury. Rebecca described this technology that Stromedix acquired from Biogen Idec back in April.

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