Development deals, clinical advances, startup funding, and new hires made up the New England life sciences news this week.

—Chelsea, MA-based Civitas Therapeutics, a spinout from the Waltham, MA, biotech Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS), said that its inhaled form of the Parkinson’s disease drug L-dopa performed well in a Phase 1 clinical trial. The study aimed to test the drug’s safety and whether the drug’s delivery to the lungs gets it into the bloodstream in levels that produce a therapeutic outcome.

—Serial biotech entrepreneurs Bob Langer (of MIT) and Omid Farokhzad (of Harvard Medical School) have founded their newest company, Blend Therapeutics, alongside MIT professor Stephen Lippard. Blend is reportedly backed by Flagship Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and NanoDimension.

—Cambridge-based genomics analysis startup Knome named former NormOxys CEO Martin Tolar its new chief executive and landed a new contract from Johns Hopkins University.

—Watertown, MA-based Forma Therapeutics announced a cancer drug discovery partnership with Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE: JNJ) Janssen Biotech, worth up to $700 million over time. That’s less than a week after Forma’s $65 million partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim was announced.

—Warp Drive Bio came out of the woodwork this week with $125 million in funding, and hopes to examine the genetic makeup of plants, animals, and other organisms to find hot new drugs. Cambridge-based Warp is backed by Boston firm Third Rock Ventures, Greylock Partners, and French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, and has an elite roster of founders, including Harvard genomics expert George Church.

—Cambridge-based Flagship Ventures surpassed its initial $250 million expectation for its fourth fund, announcing the fund closed at $270 million. It will focus on investments in the life sciences and cleantech sectors.

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Chelsea, MA-based Civitas Therapeutics announced today that its inhaled form of L-dopa—the drug that many Parkinson’s disease patients take to relieve shaking and other debilitating symptoms—performed well in a Phase 1 clinical trial. The trial was designed to test whether the drug, called CVT-301, is safe, and whether delivering it to the lungs gets it into the bloodstream at levels that are likely to produce a therapeutic outcome. So far, so good, the company says. Civitas will present comprehensive data from the study at a future scientific gathering.

Civitas seems to have passed a small, but important, first test for CVT-301. In 2011, Civitas was spun out from Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS), which had recently abandoned plans to develop an inhaled insulin product for diabetes. Civitas started up with $20 million in financing from Canaan Partners and Longitude Capital, and a state-of-the-art, 90,000 square foot manufacturing and R&D facility that it inherited from Alkermes. “Right when we walked in, we were in brand spanking new labs,” says Glenn Batchelder, co-founder and CEO of Civitas.

The idea behind Civitas was, in the most basic terms, to find a better use for the technology that Alkermes and its development partner Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) spent millions to develop. Inhaled insulin didn’t gain traction in the diabetes market, Batchelder says, because the devices that were initially developed were large and clunky, and therefore not very convenient for patients to carry around. More importantly, he says, inhaled insulin “didn’t have a clinical benefit” over injected insulin. “That was a learning.”

Civitas pursued L-Dopa because of the potential for an inhaled form of the drug to surpass the pill form in both convenience and performance, Batchelder told Xconomy during a December tour of the company’s headquarters. The pill form of L-dopa works, but some patients have to take it several times a day to see any impact, and it can be difficult to control how much of the drug gets into the bloodstream. “Food affects the variability,” Batchelder says. “They never know how much of the drug is getting to the blood. There’s also variability in how long it takes for the drug to produce an effect. Some people stop living their lives because the pills don’t solve the problem.”

CVT-301 is a fine powder that’s delivered via a small, plastic inhaler similar to an asthma inhaler. Civitas only had to make a few small adjustments to the diabetes inhaler to ensure the device would be easy enough for Parkinson’s patients to handle, Batchelder says. ”You just breathe in, and the powder goes into the lungs,” he says. “No matter how hard you breathe, you get the same exact dose.” The device, unlike some of the early insulin inhalers that were developed, is small and discreet. “It’s five plastic parts, two springs, and a staple,” Batchelder says. According to the company’s statement, CVT-301 delivered consistently precise doses during the Phase 1 trial, and the drug was immediately absorbed into the body.

Civitas is developing CVT-301 with the help of New York-based Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which announced on November 29 that it had awarded a grant of undisclosed size to the company. And Civitas inherited most of the manufacturing equipment it needs—not to mention tons of supplies—from Alkermes. During the recent tour, Batchelder and Civitas’ chief scientific officer Rick Batycky pointed out a cavernous room on the ground floor, which is serving as a holding pen for fillers, solvents, and other lab supplies, until it’s needed for commercial manufacturing. “The labs are outfitted with everything they need,” Batycky says. “When they run out, they just come here. It’s like going to Wal-Mart. It’s very valuable. We haven’t needed to buy a lot.”

If all goes well in future trials, Civitas hopes to file for approval in 2015, Batchelder says. With so much of the manufacturing infrastructure already in place, it won’t be hard to get up and running fast, he says. “That’s the beauty of having this facility,” he says. “It gives us the ability to scale this up and commercialize the drug. We wouldn’t have been able to create that as a small company.”

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Medical device makers, drug developers, charity foundations, and health IT startups rounded out the New England life sciences news pot this week.

—Cambridge, MA-based MedicalRecords.com is raising $500,000 to put toward the development of its website, which connects sellers of electronic medical records software with doctors looking to adopt the technology.

—Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, a New Haven, CT-based antibiotics developer with two drugs in clinical trials, filed documents with the SEC indicating its intent to go public. The company, founded in 2000, has developed a drug-discovery platform based around an atomic, three-dimensional picture of the interactions between the antibiotics and the bacteria they target.

—The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research awarded grant money to Chelsea, MA-based Civitas Therapeutics, a startup working to improve the standard treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Patients usually take the drug, levodopa (L-dopa), in pill form, but Civitas is developing a version that they could inhale to get quicker, more precise doses of the medication. The company, spun out by the Waltham, MA, biotech Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS) will test the inhalable drug in a pair of clinical trials over the next year.

—Mundipharma will provide $50 million to Cambridge-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals in 2013 to support the development of Infinity (NASDAQ: INFI) drug candidates, like IPI-145, a molecule that’s being designed to treat blood cancers and inflammatory conditions. Infinity and Mundipharma first inked a collaboration deal in 2008, in which Mundipharma and its Stamford, CT-based affiliate Purdue Pharma, the maker of the drug oxycodone (Oxycontin), said they would pay $75 million to Infinity to access the company’s research and development capabilities.

—Cambridge-based Idera Pharmaceuticals regained the rights to a cancer drug it was previously co-developing with Merck KGaA, until the German drugmaker cancelled the collaboration this past July. Merck will continue an ongoing clinical trial of the drug, IMO-2055, in combination with Eli Lilly’s cetuximab (Erbitux) in 104 patients with a form of head and neck cancer, and Idera will reimburse the company for about 1.8 million Euros in expenses associated with the trial across 12 months. Idera (NASDAQ: IDRA) will own the data from that trial and other clinical studies Merck helped conduct and finance.

—A bioreactor made by Holliston, MA-based Harvard Bioscience was recently used in the world’s first two synthetic trachea implantations. Harvard’s InBreath Bioreactor helped create the tracheas by using the patients’ own stem cells. The company (NASDAQ: HBIO) has been around for 110 years as a maker of scientific instruments such as pumps and glassware for drug research, but it’s expanding its presence in the regenerative medicine field.

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The holiday weekend didn’t seem to slow New England deals making down.

—MedicalRecords, a Cambridge, MA-based startup connecting doctors with sellers of health record software, is working on raising its first outside funding round. It’s got about 60 percent of a targeted $500,000 round committed, from investors like Ty Danco and Peter Bordes.

—New Haven, CT-based antibiotics developer Rib-X Pharmaceuticals filed federal documents that reveal its plans to go public. The company has raised $208.4 million in venture funding and recently inked a partnership with Sanofi that could be worth as much as $772 million.

—Mundipharma will provide more than $50 million in funding in 2013 to Cambridge-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals as an expansion of a drug development partnership first inked in 2008. The money will go to developing drug candidates from Infinity (NASDAQ: INFI) such as IPI-145, which is being designed to target blood cancers and inflammatory conditions.

—VMTurbo, a Waltham, MA-based virtualization management software developer, announced that it had wrapped up a $10 million Series B investment led by its return backers Bain Capital Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. The new funding will go to product development, customer support, sales, and marketing.

—Skyhook Wireless has inked a deal to get its location-finding technology into the new Norton Anti-Theft Web service, from Mountain View, CA-based Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC). The Norton service enables people to lock, locate, and, ideally, recover a lost or stolen Windows-based laptop, and Android smartphone or tablet, with Skyhook’s technology that use GPS, WiFi and cellular signals to track a device.

—ChoiceStream, a Cambridge-based developer of software for personalizing e-commerce shopping experiences for consumers, raised $8.7 million of a targeted $12.3 million equity and options offering, an SEC filing showed.

—Boston-based Summit Partners led a $10 million investment LogiXML, a maker of Web-based business intelligence software. Other LogiXML investors include Grotech Ventures and Updata Partners.

—Civitas, a Chelsea, MA-based spinout of the biotech Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS), will get an undisclosed grant award from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Reseach to put towards development of an inhaled form of the Parkinson’s treatment levodopa (L-dopa).

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For decades, people with Parkinson’s disease have been taking L-dopa pills to keep symptoms of the neurodegenerative disease under control. But now the Michael J. Fox Foundation is betting that a new form of the drug can be inhaled into the lungs to provide fast relief when the old standby isn’t getting the job done.

The New York-based Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research is announcing today it is providing an undisclosed grant award to help Chelsea, MA-based Civitas Therapeutics develop an inhaled form of levodopa (L-dopa) for Parkinson’s disease. Civitas plans to use the Fox Foundation support, along with its $20 million Series A investment from earlier this year, to run a pair of clinical trials over the next year that will seek to prove that an inhalable L-dopa can be a viable alternative to the pill form. The first clinical trial of the drug, CVT-301, is set to begin before year’s end, says Civitas CEO Glenn Batchelder.

Patients with Parkinson’s tend to take L-dopa pill about three times a day, to try to keep a steady amount of the drug in the bloodstream. Take too much, and it won’t do much good, and it can cause side effects. Too little means that the telltale symptoms like tremors and stiffness start to appear. Various companies have tried other ways to deliver steady doses of the drug, through skin patches or infusion-based medicines, with little to show for it. If Civitas, a spinoff from Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS), can create an inhalable form, it could end up providing a quick and steady dose for those instances when the pills don’t work. The demand for such a treatment could be big, since about 1 million people in the U.S. suffer from Parkinson’s.

“People have been trying to deliver L-dopa, the gold standard treatment, for 40 years,” says Batchelder. “We believe this is the technology that will really make a difference.” Todd Sherer, the CEO of the Michael J. Fox Foundation, added in a statement that L-dopa delivery challenges “represent a critical unmet need in Parkinson’s disease.”

Civitas CEO Glenn Batchelder

Civitas has a lot more resources than the typical venture-backed startup might have to pursue this kind of challenge. The company is housed in a Chelsea, MA, facility that represents more than $100 million of investment, which Alkermes built up years ago to make inhalable insulin for diabetics through a partnership with Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY). Lilly scrapped that program in 2008, which got people thinking about what other inhalable drugs could be made there. By January, the assets were spun out into a new company, Civitas Therapeutics, which secured $20 million in a financing co-led by Canaan Partners and Longitude Capital.

The key challenge that Civitas is facing is with what you could call drug transportation. The existing L-dopa pills are swallowed and make their way into the intestines, where they get absorbed into the bloodstream. Sometimes the amount of drug concentration that actually gets into the blood can be erratic, however, because L-dopa can get blocked in the digestive tract when there are large protein molecules from food that get in the way, Batchelder says.

“Orally, it goes in, and it may get into your blood in 30 or 60 or 90 minutes, or maybe not much will get in at all,” Batchelder says. “Through the lungs, you can get precise dose.”

Civitas will have to prove … Next Page »

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The benefits of generating databases based on the personal genetics of thousands of people came into better focus today with an announcement from Mountain View, CA-based 23andMe, the startup that aspires to be the world’s trusted source for personal genetic information.

Using genetic data drawn from thousands of 23andMe customers, the company says it has identified a gene that appears to protect against a genetic mutation associated with Parkinson’s disease. Specifically, 23andMe says the gene serum/glucocorticoid regulated kinase 1 (SGK1) appears to be protective against a mutation known as leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2).

A specific mutation on the LRRK2 gene, known as G2019S, is recognized as a risk factor for developing Parkinson’s. About half the people with the mutation develop the disease. Yet 23andMe says it has genetic data from a large number of people who carry the mutation, but who surprisingly don’t have Parkinson’s. In scrutinizing this group, 23andMe says it made the first-time discovery of the potentially protective nature of SGK1.

23andMe chief business officer Ashley Dombkowski previewed the SGK1 findings at Xconomy’s “Computing in the Age of the $1,000 Genome” event in San Francisco yesterday. Dombkowski said the company has amassed the world’s largest Parkinson’s research cohort, which has more than 6,000 participants and includes one of the largest groups of individuals carrying the pathogenic mutations in the LRRK2 gene.

The Parkinson’s initiative undertaken by 23andMe “has proven the tremendous potential in leveraging DNA technology, the Internet, and patient participation to accelerate findings,” says Todd Sherer, CEO of The Michael J. Fox Foundation.

The foundation awarded a $500,000 grant to the San Diego-based Scripps Research Institute in 2010 to identify a new and potentially vital therapeutic target for Parkinson’s disease. The foundation directed the grant to Philip LoGrasso, a Scripps professor of molecular therapeutics, who has been studying LRRK2 and SGK1.

“The SGK1 discovery, while still early-stage, is a promising outcome of this unique research platform, and holds potential to inform a therapeutic approach for Parkinson’s,” Sherer says. “We are eager to see the results of the continued investigation of SGK1 by Scripps.”

23andMe says it has 125,000 genotyped customers, and nearly 90 percent have opted-in to participate in research approved by the company’s Institutional Review Board. “These individuals are extremely valuable for us to study as they provide insights into why some people do not develop disease despite having high-risk genetic factors,” says CEO Anne Wojciki in a statement released by the company. “This could lead to new drug targets or diagnostics.”

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Wayne State University announced last week that one of its professors, Dr. Aloke Dutta, has received a $2.1 million grant for his work researching drugs that ease symptoms caused by Parkinson’s Disease. Dutta and his team aim to develop drugs with multiple ways of working to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and also to modify the disease by spurring survival of the dopamine neurons that would otherwise gradually degenerate.

“We’re trying to double up multifunctional drugs,” Dutta says. “We’re still in the discovery process, but we have some encouraging data.”

Dutta believes that Parkinson’s is a poorly understood disease, and that multifunctional drugs that address symptoms as well as generate dopamine offer Parkinson’s patients the best source of relief. Though Dutta is purely in the research phase now, he hopes to move to clinical trials shortly.

“In a perfect world, we could be able to get this kind of drug to market within 10 to 15 years,” Dutta says.

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On June 8, Neurologix (NASDAQ: NRGX) released positive data from a trial of its experimental gene therapy treatment in patients with Parkinson’s Disease. It was the latest in a string of impressive announcements from the Fort Lee, NJ-based company, which has been on a roll since March, when the journal Lancet Neurology published six-month results from the study, a Phase 2 clinical trial involving 45 patients.

Has Wall Street applauded? Not exactly. Neurologix, a perennial penny stock, hasn’t traded over a buck since last December—the June 8 announcement bumped its stock from $0.67 to $0.70 a share. (It’s now at $0.79.) But with its Phase 2 completed, the company needs to raise about $50 million to complete the pivotal Phase 3 study that will be necessary to win FDA approval. It won’t be easy, admits Neurologix co-founder Michael Kaplitt, an associate professor of neurological surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. “The biggest concern” among investors, he says, “is fear of the unknown.”

Such are the frustrations of being a biotech company that’s trying to pioneer an entirely new approach to treating neurological diseases—and one that involves gene therapy, no less. The basic idea of gene therapy is to correct a dysfunctional disease-causing gene by replacing it with a functional gene that’s inserted into the body. It was once a hot concept in biotech, and a technique that many scientists believed could treat a range of diseases.

Then disaster struck. In 1999, 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger died after receiving an experimental gene therapy for a rare disease, during a trial being conducted at the University of Pennsylvania. Funding for research into gene therapy around the world became scarce.

But Kaplitt and co-founder Matthew During were undeterred. They formed Neurologix in 1999 around a technique that they believed would ameliorate the risks inherent in earlier gene therapy attempts. One main approach to gene therapy involves packing copies of healthy genes into viruses known as “vectors,” which then transport the genes into cells. Scientists believe Gelsinger’s death was caused by an immune reaction to the vector—not to the gene itself. Neurologix’s brain treatment, which During and Kaplitt first described in a 1994 paper, uses a vector called adeno-associated virus 2, which doesn’t trip an immune reaction in humans.

Kaplitt and During also figured out how to deliver the gene only to the part of the brain that goes bad in Parkinson’s patients. Parkinson’s occurs when there’s an imbalance of two brain chemicals, GABA and glutamate, During explains. That, in turn, causes dopamine-producing cells in the brain to die—resulting in the symptoms characteristic of the disease, including … Next Page »

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NeuroHealing Pharmaceuticals was founded in 2004 with an unusual mission and out-of-the-box business model. It scours the vast world of approved drugs for molecules that can be reformulated and then repositioned as therapies to treat diseases of the central nervous system. And it does so with only four full-time employees, because NeuroHealing is a “virtual” company—it outsources everything from basic research to clinical trials.

Now, the Newton, MA-based outfit can point to some compelling evidence that its approach is working. In May, NeuroHealing began a pivotal phase 2/3 study of NH001, its drug to treat patients who have fallen into comas following severe traumatic brain injuries. The study is partially funded by a grant from the FDA and has been initiated at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital at Harvard.

NH001 is the first of three drug candidates that NeuroHealing is advancing through the research process. CEO Neal Farber, a veteran of Biogen and several startups, says he was looking for a way to improve the rehabilitation process for patients with brain injuries. “When people suffer those injuries, it isn’t the neurons that are broken, but the connections between them,” he explains.

Some scientific literature suggested that boosting dopamine levels in the brain might help repair those connections. So Farber and his small team started by scouring the globe for a dopamine product that could be used in brain-injury patients. They settled on apomorphine, a drug developed in the 1980s in Europe to treat Parkinson’s Disease. Apomorphine never found much of a market, because it has to be injected, making it less appealing than oral drugs to treat Parkinson’s. NeuroHealing tweaked the drug so it could be safely injected into coma patients as a continuous infusion for 12 hours a day. “We believe that if we keep [dopamine] levels high for a prolonged length of time, we can kickstart neuroplasticity,” Farber says.

In an early trial with eight patients, seven regained consciousness—a success rate that Farber hopes will be repeated in the new trial, which will include 76 patients. If it works, the market opportunity could be rich: There are about 200,000 patients in comas at any given time, according to NeuroHealing’s market research. But there are no … Next Page »

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23andMe is used to lots of eye-rolling from scientists. One geneticist, quoted a year ago in the New York Times, ridiculed the Mountain View, CA-based maker of consumer genetic tests for providing little more than “a really wonderful form of recreation.”

One year later, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki stood in front of a room of genomic scientists at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and boldly declared that 23andMe is turning into “a research company.” Sure, the business still relies heavily on persuading consumers to buy a test to look at certain regions of their DNA, partly out of curiosity and potential health benefits. But now 23andMe is building up a second revenue stream, using its database of 75,000 customers and counting, to help drug companies and scientists engage with the public, with an eye toward advancing research.

“We got a lot of criticism early, from people who said, ‘You launched too early, there wasn’t tons of data behind it.’ It was probably true,” Wojcicki said in her May 15 talk to scientists at the Seattle conference. Things are changing now, she says: “We still give people access to their genetic information. But a lot more than that, we are really a research company.”

The big change at 23andMe, to enable this kind of shift over the past year, has been about price. The company, founded in 2006, introduced its first product at $999. Benefitting from the breakneck pace of faster/cheaper DNA sequencing the past couple years, 23andMe has progressively brought its price all the way down to $99, plus a $5 monthly fee. The test looks at regions of a person’s genome to determine things like ancestry, and genetic mutations that are thought to slightly raise or lower the risk of certain diseases.

Anne Wojcicki

Wojcicki’s Seattle talk didn’t include any financial data on how well privately held 23andMe is doing, and she wouldn’t provide any forecasts when I asked a couple follow-up questions. But she said the company has seen an accelerating demand from consumers since last Thanksgiving, when it lowered the price of its test from $199 to $99. The lower price has encouraged more consumers to give the test a try, but equally important for 23andMe is what happens after the customer pays for the first test.

The key to its research plan, Wojcicki says, is in maintaining a relationship with its consumers through use of targeted surveys. So far, the company has crafted 50 different surveys, and found ways to make them fun for consumers by sprinkling in random questions so it’s not just “one big topic” that bores people, Wojcicki said. About 50,000 people have taken at least one of the 23andMe surveys, and the average person who does a survey takes 10 of them, Wojcicki said.

It wasn’t totally clear to me from Wojcicki’s talk how this can help drug development, other than simply being able to provide access to patients. But she gave one example in which 23andMe surveyed its customer base three days before an important meeting with a pharmaceutical company. 23andMe asked its customers about their experience with dry eye, got “thousands” of responses, and took the data into the meeting, Wojcicki said.

“We’ve taken on partnerships with pharma companies, where they may want to put out a survey, and we’ll do that for them,” Wojcicki said in a short interview last week, following her talk. “We never return individual-level data. It’s always aggregated. We can ask questions like ‘Is there a genetic association in certain reactions to sunscreen?’ Things like that. We’ve found that consumers are really interested in how they can participate in research.”

Wojcicki didn’t name names of the pharma companies involved, but the company’s growing ability to survey distinct groups of patients—like, say, those with Parkinson’s disease—could be the sort of thing that helped attract a couple more drug companies into its investor syndicate last year. The company’s investors include Google (where Wojcicki’s husband, Sergey Brin, is the co-founder), Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, Johnson & Johnson, MPM Capital, and Roche.

Lee Hood, the high-speed gene sequencing pioneer who leads the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, said he was particularly interested in how 23andMe has … Next Page »

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Prexa Pharmaceuticals, a Boston-based biotech developing experimental drugs for treating central nervous disorders, announced it wrapped up a $7 million Series B funding round from Advent Healthcare Ventures and new investor Shire Pharmaceuticals. Prexa, which previously raised $3.1 million in Series A money, was co-founded by Advent in 2006 and is working on molecules to safely enhance dopamine activity and norepinephrine activity, to improve on existing treatments for for ADHD, depression and Parkinson’s disease.

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Silicon Valley’s New Enterprise Associates and Venrock are among the institutional investors participating in a private placement with Acadia Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ACAD), a San Diego biotech focused on central nervous system disorders. Acadia says it is selling nearly 12.6 million shares for slightly more than $1.19 a share in a transaction that’s expected to generate gross proceeds of $15 million. The deal, which is scheduled to close Wednesday, will provide funding for late-stage trials of pimavanserin, Acadia’s Parkinson’s drug, and extend Acadia’s available cash into 2013.

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Alkermes’s leased facility in Chelsea, MA has come back to life. Civitas Therapeutics, a spinout of Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ:ALKS), has taken up residency there and renewed efforts to commercialize inhaled drug-delivery technology from Alkermes. The facility in Chelsea was set up years ago to develop and produce inhaled insulin under a pact with Eli Lilly, but it closed after Lilly abruptly pulled its support of the program in March 2008.

Civitas says it has secured $20 million in a Series A round of funding, which is primarily intended to back development of the startup’s technology for treating patients with Parkinson’s disease, says Glenn Batchelder, a founder and CEO of the firm. Longitude Capital and Canaan Partners co-led the financing, and Alkermes has an equity stake in the startup and granted a license to the inhaled drug-delivery technology to Civitas. Alkermes had laid off some 150 workers and ended development of inhaled insulin after its multi-million-dollar deal with Indianapolis-based Lilly (NYSE:LLY) fell through nearly three years ago.

While Civitas is developing the same core technology, it isn’t planning to touch the inhaled insulin market. Inhaled insulin was a huge flop for the pharmaceutical industry in the last decade. And Lilly dropped its partnership with Alkermes after drug giant Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and Novo Nordisk bailed on products that enabled delivery of insulin through the lungs, as a less-invasive alternative to injections that control blood sugar levels in diabetics. But Batchelder appears to have learned from the inhaled insulin failure.

“As we stepped back and looked at this opportunity,” Batchelder says, “we said we’re going to focus on not just something that is a more convenient route of administration or the best way to deliver something to the lungs, but actually a transformative benefit for patients.”

The firm sees such benefit potential for patients with Parkinson’s. Patients with the neurological disease have trouble moving, especially when typically oral drugs such as L-dopa and other pills fall short on keeping steady levels of a neurotransmitter called dopamine in their system. With an inhaled therapy, Civitas wants to both steady the effectiveness of the existing treatments as well as offer a new quick-acting option against the sudden attacks that stymie their mobility. Inhaled delivery could put a treatment into a patient’s bloodstream quickly, without having to travel through the gut to be metabolized like pills. Parkinson’s can also rob people of their normal capacity to swallow, he says, and that too can be overcome with inhaled delivery.

Batchelder, who was previously chief executive of the Cambridge, MA-based biotech BIND Biosciences, says that he initially started talks with Alkermes CEO Richard Pops in 2009 about ways to renew efforts to commercialize the pulmonary-delivery technology. The founding team of the startup got together in May 2010 after it was decided that a separate firm solely focused on developing the technology was the best way to go.

“I am very pleased to have such a talented and committed group focused on developing these assets,” Pops said in a statement. (I requested an interview with Pops but it didn’t happen, so I did’t get to ask Alkermes’s dynamic chief why he has opted to not develop this technology internally.) “This team is well positioned to leverage this technology platform,” Pops added in the statement.

Civitas’s founding team includes its top scientific advisor, Jim Wright, who was an employee of Alkermes when the biotech acquired the core technology for inhaled dry powder drug delivery in 1999. And Rick Batycky, Civitas’s chief scientist, was an early employee who worked on the inhalation technology at Advanced Inhalation Research (AIR) in the late ’90s, before it was acquired by Alkermes, and then led its development at Alkermes.

Civitas, unlike a typical startup, has gotten started with a technology that has already cleared a number of technical hurdles and has been used to deliver more than a million doses of medicine to patients. Batchelder says that the technology is unique because it can deliver large and precise dosages of medicine, including both protein drugs and small molecules. His startup is focusing on delivering small molecules.

The company isn’t saying which drugs it plans to deliver in the inhaled particles, including in the Parkinson’s program. Yet the firm hopes to begin initial clinical studies in humans in early 2012 for the Parkinson’s treatment and have some validation of that program by the end of the year. If all goes well, the startup is also poised to quickly advance manufacturing its treatment in the facility that was built for producing inhaled insulin in Chelsea.

This could turn out to be an incredible resurrection of a technology, depending on how well Batchelder and his team fare in the coming years. At the very least, Alkermes has found new life for its storied AIR technology.

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Natick, MA-based medical devices giant Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) said today that it has acquired Intelect Medical, a developer of neuromodulation technologies for deep brain stimulation. Boston Scientific, which already owned an equity stake in Intelect, is buying the firm for about $60 million in cash. Intelect’s technology is expected to complement Boston Scientific’s existing deep brain stimulation offerings and to enable physicians to visualize stimulation fields in the brain in order to provide more precise therapy. Deep brain stimulation, for example, has been used to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease.

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Biogen Idec is making another step towards building itself into a neurological diseases drug specialist. The Weston, MA-based biotech company (NASDAQ:BIIB) said today it has acquired a subsidiary of the Swiss biotech firm Neurimmune Holding to gain worldwide rights to antibody drugs against three specific proteins, which might cause neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s when they mis-fold.

Biogen, the world’s largest maker of multiple sclerosis drugs, said it has agreed to pay Neurimmune $32.5 million upfront and up to $395 million in potential milestone payments. The companies have a previous agreement that dates back to 2007 to discover antibodies against a separate protein target related to the treatment of Alzheimer’s. For the programs included in the new deal, Biogen is responsible for clinical development and commercialization of the antibody drug candidates and Neurimmune is taking on research duties such as discovery of back-up candidates against the protein targets of interest.

This latest deal fits with the strategy that Biogen revealed in early November when it announced it would axe about 650 jobs, close its cancer research hub in San Diego, and take other steps to emphasize its neurology business. The company, founded in 1978, is building on its existing base in this market with products such as its top-selling MS drugs interferon beta-1a and (Avonex) and natalizumab (Tysabri). The layoffs and other cost-cutting steps the firm announced last month are expected to reduce its expenses by about $300 million per year.

This deal with Neurimmune helps Biogen build up its neurology pipeline beyond its core strength in multiple sclerosis, which is becoming an increasingly competitive corner of the neurology market with large drug makers such as Novartis and EMD Serono advancing new oral MS therapies.

“Biogen Idec is committed to becoming the global leader in the development of innovative therapies for neurodegenerative diseases,” Alfred Sandrock, senior vice president of neurology research and development at Biogen, said in a statement. “Neurimmune continues to impress us with their ability to translate scientific insights into innovative antibodies for the potential treatment and prevention of many neurodegenerative diseases.”

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Ceregene, the San Diego-based gene therapy company, said today it has raised $11.5 million in a Series D venture round. Hamilton BioVentures and Alta Partners led the deal, which included MPM Capital and Investor Growth Capital. Ceregene said plans to use the money to complete a Phase 2b clinical trial of its experimental treatment CERE-120 for Parkinson’s disease. Back in December 2008, Ceregene said a mid-stage trial of 58 patients failed to show a statistically significant advantage when compared to a placebo. For more on Ceregene and its strategy against Parkinson’s disease, check out this profile we ran back in October 2008.

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News on cancer drugs, stem cells, and the rare item about promising drugs for Parkinson’s disease crossed our desk this week.

—South San Francisco-based Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL) rebounded a bit from its rough summer when it said this week it has raked in a $60 million payment through a new partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Back in June, Bristol walked away from a deal to co-develop Exelixis’ lead cancer drug candidate, and CEO George Scangos left for the top job at Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec shortly thereafter.

—Fate Therapeutics, the San Diego-based stem cell company co-founded by Stanford University researcher Phil Beachy and a bunch of other big-name scientists, said this week it struck its first big partnership with Becton Dickinson to distribute its technology. The two companies will seek to get Fate’s technology for making induced pluripotent stem cells into the hands of more academic and industry labs.

—Synosia Therapeutics, a biotech with operations in South San Francisco and Basel, Switzerland, said this week it formed an alliance with Belgium-based UCB to develop a couple of drug candidates for Parkinson’s disease. The deal could be worth as much as $725 million in milestone payments over time. Synosia also said it filled up the corporate coffers with a $30 million venture round (with $20 million of that coming from UCB).

—South San Francisco-based Genentech shared some very impressive data at a European medical meeting which showed its supercharged version of trastuzumab (Herceptin) was able to beat the original drug in a head-to-head study. The experimental treatment, T-DM1, is designed to carry potent toxins directly to tumors, a form of targeted chemotherapy. Data is still preliminary, but the new drug was better at shrinking tumors, and offered patients fewer side effects than a regimen of the original drug and standard chemo.

—Cell Biosciences, the Santa Clara, CA-based maker of life sciences instruments, supplies and software, said this week it has acquired Toronto-based Convergent Bioscience for $12 million, and also raised $20 million in venture financing in connection with the deal.

—And lastly, we had a couple of op-eds from San Francisco biotech leaders well worth checking out if you missed them. QB3′s Reg Kelly talked about how universities can help address “Big Pharma’s Wicked Problem,” and BayBio’s Gail Maderis argued against Proposition 24, a ballot initiative that she says will hurt all sorts of businesses in California if it passes.

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Synosia Therapeutics made some waves in biotech today with a couple of deals that reflect its progress in developing new therapies for Parkinson’s disease.

The company, with offices in South San Francisco and Basel, Switzerland, said today it has formed a partnership with Belgium-based UCB that could generate as much as $725 million in milestone payments for development of neurology drugs. Synosia also has pulled in a $30 million venture investment, with $20 million coming from UCB, and the rest from its existing backers—Versant Ventures, 5AM Ventures, Novo A/S, Aravis Venture, Investor Growth Capital, and Swiss Helvetia Fund.

The partnership provides UCB the exclusive worldwide rights to develop Synosia compound called SNY-115, and widespread (non-orphan) applications of a second dru, SYN-118. The first drug candidate, which Synosia obtained from Roche three years ago, is designed to work as an oral pill with the rare ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Both drugs are currently in mid-stage clinical trials as treatments for Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disease in which causes a progressive loss of motor control and other symptoms. Many patients with Parkinson’s take levodopa (L-dopa) to relieve symptoms, although the effect of that drug—a precursor of a neurotransmitter called dopamine that’s lacking in Parkinson’s patients’ brains—wears off over time. An estimated 1.5 million people in the U.S. suffer from Parkinson’s, and about 50,000 people are diagnosed with it each year.

Synosia says that its lead drug, SYN-115, is designed to enhance the effect of L-dopa and dopamine stimulators without triggering involuntary movements. Synosia says on its website that it has completed a Phase IIa study in Parkinson’s patients, which showed that patients who took its lead drug candidate had “functional activity in relevant regions of the brain” when researchers monitored them with functional MRI scans. Researchers also reported positive effects on clinical measurements of motor function and cognition, the company said. The drug has now advanced into a more rigorous Phase IIb study, Synosia says.

Synosia will manage development of both its drug candidates through Phase II clinical development, while UCB will take responsibility for the third and final stage of clinical trials usually needed for regulatory approval. UCB will also handle the commercialization phase, if the drugs get that far.

“UCB is an ideal partner for us given their global capabilities and presence in the field of neurology and their demonstrated ability to form innovative and effective partnerships,” said Ian Massey, CEO of Synosia Therapeutics, in a statement.

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San Diego’s life sciences community and angel investors are watching transfixed as investigators unfold the suspicious death of La Jolla resident John G. Watson. We also saw some huge funding deals over the past week, and we’ve summarized it all for you here:

—Carlsbad, CA-based Regulus Therapeutics announced a lucrative partnership with Sanofi-Aventis, the Paris-based pharma giant, to discover, develop, and someday co-market microRNA drugs. Sanofi agreed to pay Regulus as much as $750 million in milestone payments, eclipsing the $600 million deal Regulus struck with GlaxoSmithKline in 2008.

—Kent Keigwin, a 59-year-old financial advisor, appeared in a San Diego County Superior Court yesterday to face identify theft, grand theft and forgery charges. San Diego Police say Keigwin posed as John G. Watson, a retired biotech executive and local angel investor, and illegally transferred $7.5 million out of Watson’s brokerage account. Watson, who was 65, was found dead in his La Jolla home on June 8.

—San Diego’s Neurocrine Biosciences (NASDAQ: NBIX) granted worldwide rights to experimental diabetes drugs to German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim in a deal that could be worth as much as $225 million. In a separate deal, the U.S. drug giant Abbott Laboratories agreed to pay Neurocrine up … Next Page »

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San Diego-based Ceregene, which is developing gene therapy treatments for Parkinson’s and other ailments, says it is getting $2.5 million from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. The company says it is conducting a mid-stage study that aims to deliver the neurotrophic factor neurturin to improve the status of degenerating neurons in the brain. Ceregene says its venture investors include Alta Partners, MPM Capital, Investor Growth Capital, Hamilton BioVentures and California Technology Partners. Another investor, BioSante Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker: BPAX]]), acquired its position following its merger with Cell Genesys last October.

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