Clinical data, startup financings, and collaborations, oh my. It’s been a busy New England life sciences news week.

—Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme revealed that its experimental multiple sclerosis treatment, alemtuzumab (Lemtrada), significantly reduced relapses and disability in a Phase 3 trial where it was tested head-to-head against Rebif, a form of interferon sold by EMD Serono and Pfizer. The drug from Sanofi’s Genzyme reduced relapse rates by 49 percent and reduced the risk of worsening disability by 42 percent.

—Lexington, MA-based Avaxia Biologics recently announced a $2.2 million investment led by Cherrystone Angels in Providence, RI, with participation from Boston Harbor Angels and undisclosed individual investors. Avaxia is developing an anti-inflammatory drug by inoculating pregnant cows and collecting antibodies from their milk.

—Third Rock Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners led a $15 million Series A investment in Allena Pharmaceuticals of Newton, MA. The startup, whose team comes from the now Eli Lilly-owned biotech Alnara, is working on enzyme-based oral treatments for kidney and urologic diseases.

–Agios Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge took in $78 million in an oversubscribed Series C financing. The money comes from existing investors Arch Venture Partners, Flagship Ventures, and Third Rock Ventures, and Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG), who Agios has been collaborating with on developing cancer-starving drugs.

—Speaking of drug collaborations, Cambridge-based Aileron Therapeutics expanded a partnership it first inked with Roche in 2010. The two companies had been working on turning Aileron’s “stapled peptide” technology into cancer treatments in two programs, and announced this week that they would add a third, focused on inflammatory diseases.

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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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Waltham, MA-based Proteon Therapeutics, which specializes in drug development for kidney and vascular diseases, announced today that it has completed a second closing for its Series B equity financing round. $12 million primarily came from new investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Devon Park Bioventures, raising the total for the round to $50 million.  Vectis Healthcare & Life Sciences Fund, MPM Bio IV NVS Strategic Fund L.P., TVM Capital, Skyline Ventures, Prism VentureWorks, and Intersouth Partners participated in the first closing back in March. At that time, Proteon also inked a deal with Novartis to give the Swiss drug giant the option to acquire the company following successful Phase 2 trials of its leading product, PRT-201, which is intended to help ease surgery for dialysis patients. We’re coming down with a serious case of deja vu over here…

[Updated at 3:00pm to clarify the details of the two separate closings.]

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ZymoGenetics has some minor good news coming out today. The Seattle biotech company said that a study showed its genetically-engineered protein drug, IL-21, was able to help shrink and stabilize kidney tumors in combination with another targeted drug, even in patients whose disease relapsed after prior therapy.

The preliminary results show that three of 18 patients (17 percent) on IL-21 and Bayer and Onyx Pharmaceuticals’ sorafenib (Nexavar) had their tumors shrink at least by one-fourth, and seven of 13 patients who finished three courses of therapy had their tumors stabilize or shrink, researchers said today at the EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Geneva, Switzerland.

The study didn’t have a control group, so it’s impossible to say how much better (or worse) this treatment combination might be than any other alternative. ZymoGenetics (NASDAQ: ZGEN) says the combination regimen “appears to compare favorably” with other clinical trials, which showed that sorafenib on its own causes tumor shrinkage for just 2 percent of patients who are this sick. The company will know whether it has hit the main goal of the study, to see whether the combination therapy can slow the spread of kidney cancer, in the first half of 2009. Kidney cancer kills an estimated 13,000 people each year, according to the American Cancer Society. So even though sorafenib and Pfizer’s sunitinib (Sutent) have brought progress to patients with this disease, there’s always room for improvement.

“We continue to see promising anti-tumor effects from the combination of IL-21 and Nexavar in patients with renal cell cancer,” said Nicole Onetto, ZymoGenetics’ chief medical officer, in a company statement. “We look forward to final results.”

Like any combination cancer treatment, especially in very sick patients who have failed prior therapy, the IL-21 and sorafenib in tandem have side effects. Most side effects were mild, and consistent with what the drugs do when given on their own, but whenever you combine medicines, doctors will be on the watch for “overlapping toxicities.” Serious side effects were reported in six patients, including cases of acute kidney failure, rash and dehydration, and low white blood cell counts, ZymoGenetics said.

The two drugs are designed to work differently. IL-21 is a genetically engineered copy of a cytokine that’s supposed to stimulate killer T cells and Natural Killer cells of the immune system to destroy malignant or infected cells. Sorafenib is a kinase inhibitor that interferes with molecules that are involved in forming blood vessels to tumors, and that control overactive cell proliferation.

ZymoGenetics is looking for a ray of good news, since it has struggled to gain momentum in the marketplace with recombinant thrombin (Recothrom), its first marketed product, to control surgical bleeding. The company is also expecting to show some positive preliminary results from pegylated interferon lambda for hepatitis C at the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease next month in San Francisco. No matter—its stock has been trashed, down 57 percent this year to $5 at yesterday’s close. So any little bit of positive news at this point might help.

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