Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) hosted a large event at its R&D site in Cambridge, MA, yesterday to make its pitch for why Boston-area biotech companies should want to form partnerships with the French drug giant. It was an impressive show of force by the company, which has historically kept a lower profile in local biotech circles than some of its Big Pharma competitors.

The top brass from Sanofi were there at the firm’s Cambridge Research Center in Kendall Square. Sanofi CEO Chris Viehbacher outlined the global drug-maker’s plans to form stronger ties with biotech firms in Boston and around the world as part of a broader strategy to build a more sustainable business. Viehbacher also confirmed that Sanofi plans to form a venture capital unit to invest in biotech companies and further efforts to access innovation from outside of the company.

Sanofi, like many other Big Pharma companies, is looking outside of its organization to biotech firms for what Viehbacher called the “right brain activity” that leads to creativity and innovation. Sanofi’s shift toward more external product development efforts includes a partnership deal with Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, announced last month, focused on the Cambridge, MA-based biotech’s experimental antibody drug for cancer. There’s a good reason for this: the large and expensive internal R&D organizations of Big Pharma companies like Sanofi haven’t been productive enough. Over the next several years Sanofi is facing patent expirations on some of its biggest sellers, such as anti-clotting drug clopidogrel bisulfate (Plavix) and the sleeping pill zolpidem (Ambien).

“We all know there is a patent cliff in this industry, and it goes from 2012 to 2014,” Viehbacher said. “But my goal isn’t just to fill a sales gap,” it’s to build a sustainable business. (Viehbacher spoke to Xconomy at length in June about his strategy for building sustainable business at Sanofi.)

Sanofi has been in Massachusetts for more than a decade, but the company has been less active in partnering with biotechs in the state than other Big Pharma outfits. The company conducts a wide variety of genomic research at its Cambridge Research Center on Albany Street, and last year the firm expanded its presence in the state with its acquisition of British vaccine developer Acambis, which has operations in Cambridge and Canton, MA. This year the company has formed alliances with …Next Page »

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We spotted three New England startups today that have recently filed papers with the SEC to report new rounds of equity financing. Other than their common geographic ties to region, it’s tough to see any relationship among these firms. But here’s a brief synopsis of the deals and what each company does:

—Waltham, MA-based Affectiva reports it has raised $1.7 million of a planned $2 million round of equity financing. This spinout of the MIT Media Lab is developing a biosensor, called the “Q,” that is designed to “measure and communicate emotional arousal” of the person wearing it, according to the firm’s website. The company says that it grew out of a collaboration at MIT to find ways to help people with varying degrees of autism. Rosalind Picard, the director of the Affective Computing Research Group at MIT, is listed as a director and executive of the company. (These filings don’t list investors in the companies.)

—Meanwhile, Westford, MA-based Aylus Networks, previously backed by Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, reported raising $5.7 million out of a planned round of about $9.3 million. The company, formed in 2005 by wireless entrepreneur Shamim Naqvi, seeks to enable rich data communications such as video telephony, video blogging, video sharing, and social networking for mobile operators.

—Have you found yourself willing to shell out gobs of cash on your pet’s drugs? I have, and I’m sure many other people have, too. Putney, a Portland, ME-based provider of specialty drugs for the veterinary market, reports that it has raised $6.6 million of a proposed $6.8 million round of equity financing. The company—which was founded in 2006 by pharmaceutical entrepreneur and CEO Jean Hoffman—says that it plans to double the size of its staff, revenues, deals, and more in 2010. (I’ve got a guess as to how the new capital will be spent.)

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Immuneering, the Cambridge, MA-based developer of computer models that aim to predict which patients are likely to respond to certain cancer drugs, has found a new home as the first life sciences startup to join Polaris Venture Partners‘ new Dog Patch Labs startup incubator in Cambridge.

Immuneering is the brainchild of CEO Ben Zeskind, a 28-year-old entrepreneur with a PhD in bioengineering from the Whitehead Institute and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He’s been getting help lately from chairman Bob Carpenter, a biotech entrepreneur who has served on the board of Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) for 15 years.

Setting up shop at Dog Patch Labs Cambridge, which Xconomy featured last month, means that Zeskind won’t have to keep working in his apartment in Boston’s Back Bay, Carpenter’s house in Brookline, or relying on conference rooms at law offices for meetings, he says. More importantly, it will give the fledgling company some free space for two to three months, and the chance to network with other bright entrepreneurs from a variety of disciplines, largely with computing backgrounds, Zeskind says.

The original Dog Patch Labs, as Bob described, set up at Pier 38 along San Francisco’s Embarcadero to house promising consumer and Internet companies, while the new office near Kendall Square is looking to bring together a wide range of ideas from computing, life sciences, and energy.

“It’s a really great environment. It’s also an opportunity to get to know the folks at Polaris, and it’s an indication of their interest in getting to know us better,” Zeskind says.

Polaris partner Mike Hirshland didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment. But Zeskind said he figures Polaris may be interested because Immuneering isn’t a classic biotech looking to develop drugs, but rather is more about combining computer models with knowledge of biology. The company uses mathematical models to see if they can predict which patients are likely to respond to Interleukin-2 therapy. The drug can be highly effective in a small percentage of patients, but also is expensive and causes significant side effects that doctors could prevent if they knew the drug won’t work.

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Watertown, MA-based Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals has raised $10 million out of a planned $29.6 million equity financing round, according to regulatory documents filed Wednesday. The Harvard spinoff, which is using synthetic chemistry to develop new antibiotics for drug-resistant infections, previously raised $25 million in two tranches that closed in August 2008.

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When Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) shut down its Allston, MA, bioreactor plant in June after discovering viral contamination, it was clear that there would be worldwide shortages of its best-selling enzyme replacement therapies, agalsidase beta (Fabrazyme) and imiglucerase (Cerezyme), and that there would be a hit to the company’s bottom line. The company got more specific about those matters today, saying in a press release that it’s taking longer than expected to restore full production of agalsidase beta, and that sales of both drugs this year will be below previously anticipated levels.

Revenue from agalsidase beta, a treatment for Fabry disease, is expected to be roughly $450 million in 2009, about $60 to $70 million less than the company had predicted in previous guidance. Revenue from the Gaucher disease treatment imiglucerase is expected to reach $800 million, which is at the low end of the previously predicted range of $750 million to $1 billion. Genzyme’s stock price was roughly flat this morning.

After sanitizing the Allston plant, Genzyme resumed production of both drugs in July, and it said today that it expects to begin shipping newly produced batches of the Gaucher drug in November, as planned.

But the news for Fabry disease patients is not as encouraging. New shipments of agalsidase beta won’t go out until mid-December, the company says, and there will be less of it to go around than previously thought. The problems: Genzyme took some extra time to do preventive maintenance before restarting the bioreactors that make agalsidase beta; the vessels are now producing the drug in lower quantities than in the past, for reasons the company isn’t disclosing; and the company has been making the drug in smaller batches, which is faster but less efficient.

As a result, “additional product conservation measures are now needed to help ensure that the limited remaining Fabrazyme inventory can be made available to as many patients as possible until new material is available,” the company said in today’s announcement. Specifically, the company said that from October 1 through the end of the year, it will only ship enough agalsidase beta to meet 30 percent of global demand; up to now, the company said it had enough of the drug on hand to cover about 80 percent of demand.

Genzyme says it’s working with doctors to set up clinical guidelines for conserving doses of the drug. The company expects to work its way back to full production—covering 100 percent of demand—sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

“We will continue to work with all stakeholders to prepare for the release of this material so that it can reach patients as quickly as possible,” Genzyme chairman and CEO Henri Termeer said in today’s announcement. “I want to express my deep appreciation to the Gaucher and Fabry communities for their support of the existing product conservation guidelines and for their anticipated collaboration in helping to manage the remaining limited product supply through the end of this year.”

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If you’re the kind of person who needs a little help remembering to take your prescription meds, Cambridge, MA-based Vitality might have just the technology you need. It’s a wireless, Internet-connected medicine bottle cap that blinks and plays a tune when it’s time to down your pills.

The company’s “GlowCaps” system, which goes on sale today for $99, is designed to appeal to baby boomers looking for ways to keep their aging, forgetful parents out of expensive nursing homes or assisted care, says Vitality founder and CEO David Rose. But eventually, users might not have to pay for GlowCaps at all, because Vitality thinks the technology will also appeal to health insurers—and to pharmaceutical companies that want to recover the billions they lose in revenues when prescriptions aren’t used as directed or refilled on time.

The GlowCaps system is available exclusively through Amazon. It’s intended for people with hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic problems that can only be controlled through regular daily medications. In one beta test involving 50 Boston-area residents, Rose says, the system prompted patients to take their medicines on schedule 86 percent of the time, compared to the average adherence rate of about 50 percent.

And that’s bound to interest a couple of big constituencies. “There are really two primary customers for our company,” says Rose. “One is pharmaceutical companies that want to sell 25 pills a month rather than 15. If you’re a company like Novartis and you have a $2.5 billion drug like Diovan [a blood pressure medication] and it costs $4 a pill, that’s a lot of revenue you should be getting.” There’s also plenty of literature, Rose says, showing that high adherence rates lower the overall cost of care. “The other path to market, then, is the companies who pay for healthcare—both insurance companies and large self-insured employers.”

For now, though, Vitality is trying to build a market beachhead by selling the GlowCaps system directly to consumers. Inside the box are three components—a GlowCap, a reminder nightlight, and a small Wi-Fi router.

The GlowCap is the key component. It fits on top of a standard plastic pill bottle, and contains an LED light, a tiny sound chip, a wireless chipset, a watch battery, and a sensor that can detect when the bottle is opened. Most of the time, the LED emits a cool blue light, but when it’s time to take a pill, it switches to a pulsing orange light and plays a little electronic ditty. If the bottle isn’t opened, the ditties get longer and more insistent.

After two hours, the cap sends a wireless message to the patient’s home Wi-Fi router, which relays it to Vitality’s servers via the Internet. (For the system to work, the user’s household needs a broadband Internet connection with an available Ethernet port—and obviously, the cap needs to be within range of the router.) Vitality’s system can then initiate an automated phone call to remind the patient to take their medicine.

Vitality keeps records of each time the GlowCap is opened, and uses this information to produce a weekly “adherence report” that can be e-mailed to the patient or an appointed caregiver or loved one. The data can also be shared with doctors via online personal health record systems like Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Dossia.

Then there’s the nightlight, which plugs into a kitchen or bathroom outlet and connects wirelessly to the router. It shines orange or blue in synchrony with the GlowCap, providing an extra reminder.

The whole system is about creating “persuasive feedback loops” that start with unobtrusive lights and electronic sounds, and escalate to …Next Page »

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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.

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Cambridge, MA drug giant Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) and Hawthorne, NY-based Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ACOR) announced today that Biogen Idec has acquired the rights to develop and commercialize Acorda’s multiple sclerosis drug, Fampridine-SR, in markets outside the U.S. Acorda will receive an upfront payment of $110 million and additional payments of up to $400 million, and retains commercialization rights to Fampridine-SR in U.S. markets. The deal increases the Cambridge company’s MS drug footprint, which already includes Biogen drugs Avonex and Tysabri. The latter drug has come under scrutiny recently for its link to a severe brain infection called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML.

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Our Seattle compatriots have all arrived in Boston for XSITE. We wish we could say they brought the rain with them, but in fact, Boston has been far wetter than Seattle all month. The week’s life sciences news, however, isn’t quite the downpour you’ve all been dealing with outside.

—Wide-roaming correspondent Ryan McBride took in some sea air while attending the Convergence conference in Newport, RI. Policy wonks abounded, as the health care industry is nervously awaiting changes to federal patent standards, generic biotech drug regulation, and healthcare coverage. Ryan gathered insights on GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK)’s purchase of Cambridge, MA-based Sirtis last spring from Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) CEO Henri Termeer’s account of a conversation he had with Sirtis CEO Christoph Westphal. For all this and more, check out his report.

—Ryan also profiled PubGet, a Cambridge-based scholarly search engine aiming to provide faster, more useful results than the likes of GoogleScholar and PubMed. Instead of clicking through multiple links to get to the paper, a PubGet search will take you directly to a full-text PDF (assuming your institution has access). PubGet’s just announced that 50 research institutions have adopted its service.

—Marlborough, MA-based Exact Sciences is going back home to where the buffalo roam. The colorectal cancer test maker is relocating to Wisconsin after securing a $1 million loan from the Badger State.

—ImmunoGen (NASDAQ: IMGN), which produces technology to aid the effectiveness of antibody drugs, raised $33 million, after expenses, through a stock offering. The Waltham company sold 5 million shares at $7 apiece.

—Cambridge’s Living Proof, which aims to apply advanced materials science to beauty products, raised $9 million in an equity financing round. The funds came from Polaris Venture Partners, the sole venture backer of the company. Living Proof recently debuted its first product, the hair treatment NoFrizz.

—I-Therapeutix, a Waltham-based maker of tiny hydrogel-based eye bandages, landed $15 million in venture capital during a Series C Financing round. Between this latest news and the recent clearance of its flagship product, the I-Zip bandage, in European markets, I-Therapeutix is sitting pretty. The company hopes to enter the American market early next year, and is currently batting its lashes at the FDA.

—Norwich Ventures sounds like a great boss to work for. The Waltham venture firm loves to invest in medical device companies at an early stage, and unlike other, larger players, doesn’t pressure companies in its portfolio to sell or exit within five years. Hear more about their strategy in Ryan’s piece here.

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Three San Diego-based biopharmaceutical startups have been raising capital, according to recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

—Valor Medical, which was founded in 2007, has raised $3.1 million of an $8 million offering, according to a recent SEC filing.  CEO H. Clark Adams says this is a partial close of a Series B round, the investors were individuals, and the company expects to have a final close by the end of the month. Valor is developing a treatment for a brain aneurysm that is administered through a microinfusion catheter. According to Clark, the funds will be used for completing requirements for their mandatory European conformity mark, scaling up for commercial launch in Europe next year, and beginning U.S. clinical trials. Valor was founded by UC San Diego Radiology & Neurosurgery Professor Charles Kerber, who serves as its president.

—Tocagen, which is developing gene therapy treatments for terminally ill cancer patients, has raised $10.8 million in an $11.2 million equity offering that began in September, according to its regulatory filing.  Tocagen was founded in 2007 by Harry Gruber, a San Diego serial entrepreneur who previously founded local biotechs Gensia Pharmaceuticals, Viagene, Aramed, and Metabasis, Inc. Gruber also founded Intervu, a San Diego Internet media startup acquired in 2000 by Akamai Technologies in a deal valued at $2.8 billion, and Kintera, which provided Web-based software used by non-profit organizations to raise funds. Neither Gruber nor Tom Darcy, Tocagen’s chief financial officer, responded to email queries seeking information. According to information on Tocagen’s website, the startup is developing treatments for two deadly types of cancers, glioblastoma multiforme (a type of brain tumor), and malignant melanoma (a type of skin cancer).

—Zogenix, which was founded in 2006 and was previously known as SJ2 Therapeutics, is raising $3.1 million through a combination of debt, warrants, and securities, according to a recent SEC filing. Zogenix is a specialty pharmaceutical startup developing two drug candidates for treating central nervous system disorders and pain. According to the Zogenix website, current investors are Abingworth Management, Clarus Ventures, Domain Associates, Scale Venture Partners, Thomas, McNerney & Partners, Life Science Angels, and Windamere Venture Partners. Chairman and co-founder Cam Garner has founded six other specialty pharmaceutical companies.

[Xconomy San Diego Editor Bruce V. Bigelow contributed to this report]

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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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The climate in Boston this week was neither steamy nor stormy. Likewise, the week in deals was a little bit hot and a little bit cold —with not much on either extreme.

—Oracle flexed its muscle in Massachusetts, acquiring Lowell, MA-based Virtual Iron for an undisclosed sum. Virtual Iron specializes in virtualization technology, which allows multiple servers to behave as one, or enables a single server to juggle multiple operating systems.

—Waltham, MA-based drug developer Artisan Pharma raised $9.4 million in a round of debt financing.  The company’s SEC filing did not name the investors.

—Cambridge’s MetaCarta raised $910K in convertible debt with help from Sevin Rosen Funds, FA Technology, and Hunt Ventures. MetaCarta’s software plots the geographic location of news items onto digital maps.

—Wind turbines are coming to the Bay State, though not to the Cape: Massachusetts received $25M from the Department of Energy to build a turbine blade-testing facility in Charlestown. The center will specialize in the testing of large blades up to 300 feet in length and will be the first such facility located outside of Europe.

—MyVu added $3.25 million to the $11.5 million it raised in January 2006. Atlas Venture and Hillman Capital are listed as “related persons” in the latest SEC filing of the Westwood, MA company, a maker of LCD video goggles.

—GrandBanks, a Newton Center, MA-based venture capital firm, continues to support Canadian tech startups. The latest beneficiary is Toronto’s I Love Rewards, developers of an online catalog that allows corporate clients to incentivize employee performance. GrandBanks was joined by JLA Ventures and Lawrence Capital in this Series B round of financing, which totaled either $5.7 million (according to a GrandBanks announcement) …Next Page »

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Marlborough, MA-based Sepracor (NASDAQ: SEPR), known mainly for its sleep aid Lunesta, said today that it has applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval of a compound called eslicarbazepine acetate as an adjunct to other therapies in adult epilepsy patients. Sepracor says the sodium-channel blocker—developed by Portuguese pharmaceutical company BIAL-Portela and licensed by Sepracor in 2007—has been tested in a multi-country Phase III study involving more than 1,000 patients. The company, which proposes to market the compound under the trade name Stedesa, estimates the U.S. market for epilepsy drugs at $3.5 billion.

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Seahorse Bioscience, a North Billerica, MA-based maker of instruments for studying mitochondrial function in cells from people with various health problems, announced yesterday that it has acquired BioProcessors Corp., a Woburn, MA, company that makes automated cell-culture equipment for pharmaceutical research. Seahorse didn’t say how much it paid for BioProcessors, but it did reveal that it has raised $6 million in new venture funding from a group including Commonwealth Capital, Oxford Bioscience, Flagship Ventures, Life Sciences Partners, FLIR Systems Inc, Healthcare Ventures, New Science Ventures and HLM Venture Partners.

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What’s the most exciting company in Seattle? I recently put the question to Patrick Ennis, the global head of technology for Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures, and his answer surprised me: Impinj. The firm in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood has been around since 2000, and is well-known for its focus on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies—not exactly the sexiest field in an era of Web 2.0, mobile software, and alternative energy startups.

But dig a little deeper, and the story of Impinj will grab you. Like most successful companies, Impinj has been forced to change its strategy at crucial moments. It has had to navigate tricky technology standards—eventually winning out in a major fight between standards bodies—and adapt to major challenges in the marketplace. Through it all, it has amassed an impressive network of customers, partners, and investors—to the tune of $110 million in funding from the likes of Arch Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Polaris Venture Partners, and Mobius Venture Capital.

So how is it doing now? After Ennis mentioned Impinj—he led an investment in the firm back when he was a managing director at Arch—I was eager to hear its story, and why its technology and business model are still so promising. I recently had a chance to visit with Impinj’s CEO, William Colleran, and Evan Fein, vice president of finance and administration. What they told me amounted to quite a compelling case study of how to navigate a nascent market.

Impinj was founded in 2000 by a University of Washington professor of computer science and engineering, Chris Diorio, who was a student of microelectronics pioneer Carver Mead at Caltech. Diorio serves as Impinj’s chairman and chief technology officer. “He’s a fantastic professor and entrepreneur,” Ennis says. “Usually, professors just want to be professors. When you do find an entrepreneur professor, it’s heaven. The world needs more people like that.”

As Fein relates, Impinj originally focused on hardware for cell phones and base stations. Diorio had developed a technology called “self-adaptive silicon” that allowed an electronic circuit on a chip to adapt its characteristics after being fabricated. The company released a cellular product in 2001—right as the telecom industry was melting down. “We decided, ‘This isn’t going to work,’” says Fein, who was employee No. 8.

So the search was on for broader applications of integrated circuit technology. In late 2003, Impinj settled on RFID as its new focus, over other promising candidates like ultrasound and GPS. The idea of cheap, tiny chips that could be used to “tag” any product or shipment and improve companies’ supply-chain management was getting a lot of play in commercial circles. What Impinj brought to the table was a …Next Page »

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Charles River Laboratories International (NYSE:CRL), a Wilmington, MA-based contract researcher for the pharmaceutical industry, says that it plans to reduce its global workforce by 3 percent during the first quarter of this year to reduce costs. The firm reportedly has between 8,500 and 9,000 employees, meaning the cuts could impact from 255 to 270 workers. The majority of layoffs will be in the company’s preclinical services business, which reported an 8.3-percent decline in revenue during the fourth quarter of last year.

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NitroMed (NASDAQ:NTMD) says that its board of directors has opted to delay a shareholder vote from today until January 20 on the company’s proposed sale of all assets related to its heart drug for African Americans, isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine hydrochloride (BiDil), to JHP Pharmaceuticals for about $26 million. The Lexington, MA-based firm says it has delayed the vote as it considers an unsolicited buyout offer made by investment firm and major NitroMed shareholder Deerfield Management, which has told the company its offer is worth 75 cents per share, up from its initial offer of 50 cents per share last month. NitroMed last year agreed to an all-stock merger with Cambridge, MA-based biotech firm Archemix, which must also be approved by shareholders.

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Cambridge, MA-based Targanta Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TARG) received a harsh blow last week as the FDA declined to approve it sole drug candidate, an antibiotic called oritavancin intended to treat antibiotic-resistant infections like MRSA. Today Targanta announced staff cutbacks intended to help the company conserve capital while it seeks approval for oritavancin in Europe and tries to get the drug back on track for approval in the United States. The company will reduce its workforce by 86 people, or about 75 percent, leaving it with only 27 employees. We have updated Xconomy’s Boston Tech Layoff Tracker with the latest numbers.

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Seattle-based Cell Therapeutics announced it has teamed up with Spectrum Pharmaceuticals of Irvine, CA, to create a 50-50 joint venture, RIT Oncology, to commercialize and develop the cancer drug Zevalin. The drug for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which Xconomy has written about extensively, will be marketed in the U.S.

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Another day, another bundle of layoffs.

Boston-based biofuels startup Mascoma is laying off between five and 10 employees, according to a report today in the Boston Globe. That’s about 10 percent of the company’s staff, which numbers around 100.*

Mascoma, which is building demonstration fermentation plants to convert sugars from high-cellulose material such as wood chips into ethanol, has pulled in tens of millions of dollars in state and federal grants, but apparently that money hasn’t made up for the growing scarcity of financing; Mascoma CEO Bruce Jamerson told the Globe that the staff cuts are “frankly being driven by what’s going on in the capital markets.”

According to the report, Mascoma president Colin South is among those being let go—which is unexpected, given that South was representing Mascoma, even giving a brief talk about the company, as recently as this Wednesday evening. South spoke at an energy entrepreneurship dinner cosponsored by Polaris Venture Partners and the MIT Venture Capital and Private Equity Club.

Meanwhile, Cambridge, MA-based Javelin Pharmaceuticals issued a release today saying that it has cut its staff by 15 percent, from 44 employees to 37. Javelin will redirect the funds to its clinical studies of three candidate pain-management drugs, according to a story in FierceBiotech.

We have updated our Boston Tech Layoff Tracker—now up to 1,380 jobs—with the newest data.

* Correction, 3:30 pm 11/14/08: The first version of this article stated that Mascoma had 20 employees. That’s the number of employees in the Boston office; the company’s total staff (before the layoffs) was approximately 100.

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