Healthcare deals are going one way, tech deals another. That’s my read from the past week in the Northwest, where we’ve seen some of the biggest biotech deals around, even as a prominent Seattle tech venture firm (and software financings in general) head south.

—Bothell, WA-based Alder Biopharmaceuticals scored one of the biggest biotech partnerships of the year, as Luke reported today. The company has formed a collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) to develop Alder’s experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug, ALD518, and the deal could be worth more than $1 billion. In exchange for granting Bristol a worldwide exclusive license to develop ALD518 for all uses except cancer, Alder will get $85 million upfront, as much as $764 million in development and regulatory milestone payments, sales-related milestone payments that could exceed $200 million, and royalties on product sales.

—I took a look at the venture and debt financings for Washington companies last month (and the previous two months), and concluded that large investments in software startups aren’t coming back anytime soon. The data, courtesy of New York-based ChubbyBrain, shows most of the money is in healthcare and life sciences.

—Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire has secured an additional investment of $1.5 billion from Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Intel, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Google, a previous investor, is not participating in the round. The money will support Clearwire’s (NASDAQ: CLWR) deployment of its WiMax broadband network.

—Verathon, a Bothell, WA-based maker of ultrasound technology, has been acquired by Sarasota, FL-based Roper Industries (NYSE: ROP) as part of a pair of transactions worth a combined $356 million, as Luke reported. The price of Verathon’s sale by itself was not announced. The company develops a 3-D diagnostic imaging tool that helps doctors diagnose bladder disorders.

—One of Seattle’s most prominent tech VC firms will not be raising another fund or making new investments. Len Jordan of Frazier Technology Ventures confirmed the news as he announced he’s moving to Madrona Venture Group at the beginning of next year.

—Bellevue, WA-based Light Sciences Oncology has lined up $35 million in follow-up financing to develop its drug-device treatment for cancer, as Luke reported. The investors weren’t disclosed, but the deal gives Light Sciences the right to access a $23.3 million line of credit, and $11.8 million more if investors choose to exercise warrants. The company raised $40 million from undisclosed VCs last year.

—Seattle startup Movaya Wireless has been acquired by Digby, a mobile commerce firm based in Austin, TX, for an undisclosed price. Movaya was founded in 2006 by Phil Yerkes and Stanley Wang, and focuses on making digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android, and mobile Web platforms. The company’s development team in China will serve as the basis for Digby’s operations in Asia.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Bothell, WA-based Verathon, which markets a simple ultrasound technology to help doctors diagnose common bladder disorders, has been acquired by Sarasota, FL-based Roper Industries in a pair of transactions worth a combined $356 million.

Roper (NYSE: ROP), a company with a market capitalization of $4.8 billion, made the announcement Friday. It said it acquired Verathon and Montgomery, AL-based United Toll for a combined $356 million, although it didn’t break out the value of each individual company. Adding those two companies will boost Roper’s revenues by more than $140 million in 2010, the company said.

Verathon has been one of the under-the-rader success stories in the Seattle-area ultrasound cluster. The company, formerly known as Diagnostic Ultrasound, was founded by Gerald McMorrow about 25 years ago. It is best known for a fast, easy-to-use diagnostic tool called BladderScan that, like the name suggests, does 3-D scans of the bladder to spot common urinary problems that urologists and primary care physicians want to look for. The company later diversified with another diagnostic tool called GlideScope, which is supposed to help doctors get a clear look inside a patient’s airway so they can do fast and efficient insertions of breathing tubes. The company has grown to more than 400 employees worldwide, according to its website.

The management teams at both Verathon and United Toll are expected to stay on the job after the deals close, Roper said.

News of the deal was reported earlier today by TechFlash.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

SonoSite, the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, said today its sales dropped 13 percent in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30. The company (NASDAQ: SONO) said it had $53.6 million in revenue during the third quarter, compared with $61.6 million in the same period a year earlier. The company also said it has started operating in the red, reporting a $240,000 net loss, compared with a $1 million a profit a year ago. SonoSite said it expects to finish this year with $225 million to $230 million in revenue, down from $243.5 million a year ago.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

This week we were jamming on our big event on the 20-year outlook for Seattle’s life sciences hub, but we still found a way to squeeze in a lot of news and features.

—Biotech pioneer Chris Henney offered an insightful and entertaining talk about how to invest in biotech at a recent speech before the CFA Society of Seattle. I included his six tips on how to spot a winning biotech in last week’s roundup, but that piece didn’t include the sequel on the five red flags investors should watch out for. The In Vivo Blog did a fun follow up on this story, too.

—If Seattle wants to grow as a biotech hub over the next 20 years, it could use a few more bars, and less university red tape. That’s according to Stephen Friend, the Rosetta Inpharmatics founder who’s now trying to ignite an open source movement for biology, in comments he made at the Xconomy event Monday evening on the 20-year outlook for Seattle life sciences. I summed up some of the other great insights I heard from his fellow panelists Ben Shapiro and Steve Gillis, and also posted a big photo gallery here that captured the energy in the room.

—Kirkland, WA-based Pathway Medical Technologies is one of the big success stories of the past year in the local medical device community, but even it has had to endure a few lessons from the school of hard knocks. CEO Paul Buckman offered a candid look at how the company is adjusting to the new reality of the medical device business.

—Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN), the giant biotech company with 900 employees in Seattle, said its experimental drug for osteoporosis, denosumab (Prolia), was delayed by FDA requests for more information. That didn’t seem like much of a big deal at first glance because the FDA didn’t ask for any new clinical trials, and it has been missing a lot of deadlines lately. But then Amgen said yesterday in its earnings release that the FDA is asking for more clinical trials to demonstrate safety of denosumab for cancer patients. Ouch.

—Sonosite, the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, got a lift this week when it settled all of its patent litigation with General Electric over ultrasound devices that weigh less than 10 pounds. Sonosite (NASDAQ: SONO) will get $21 million upfront and an undisclosed royalty on sales of GE’s portable ultrasound machines until 2016.

—Seattle-based Calistoga Pharmaceuticals released some preliminary, but encouraging, results over the weekend from a small leukemia trial. The company’s experimental drug was able to shrink tumors for 29 percent of patients in the trial, but based on some secondary findings, the company thinks it might be able to do much better than that in combination with other treatments, or with longer follow-up.

—San Diego-based Fate Therapeutics, the company co-founded by a group of top stem cell scientists that includes Randall Moon of the University of Washington, announced over the weekend that it has taken a big step toward “industrialized” production of stem cells for drug discovery. The advance for inducing adult cells into a pluripotent, stem-cell like state, came from the lab of Fate co-founder Sheng Ding, a professor at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Sonosite, the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, said today it will receive a $21 million upfront payment from General Electric as part of a settlement of all patent litigation between the companies. Sonosite will also receive an undisclosed royalty on U.S. sales of GE’s ultrasound systems that weigh less than 10 pounds, until one of Sonosite’s patents expires in 2016.  “It not only affirms the value of our patents, but also will enable the expansion of our research program for point-of-care ultrasound in medicine,” said Sonosite CEO Kevin Goodwin, in a statement.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

People who make a living creating innovative medical devices—whether it’s an ultrasound diagnostic tool, a stent to prop open clogged arteries, or an MRI machine—are an unhappy bunch these days.

Let us count the ways, as described in the second annual medical device industry analysis being released today by Ernst & Young. Because unemployment is up, people are losing their employer-sponsored health insurance. That means patients are postponing elective medical procedures, and hospitals and government payers are tightening their budgets. A powerful U.S. Senator, Max Baucus, wants to raise $40 billion in taxes on the medical device industry; healthcare reformers like President Obama are talking about comparative effectiveness studies that would add time and expense to device development; and lawmakers are considering whether to require companies to disclose all gifts and payments to doctors who help develop and buy their products.

Those are the megatrends medical device companies have to deal with in this recession, but what does the data say about how they’re being affected? Here are some highlights that caught my eye in this 60-page report:

—Despite the recession, revenues of publicly traded medical technology companies in the U.S. and Europe actually climbed 11 percent to $289 billion (although the growth was only about half that much when factoring out foreign-exchange rate fluctuations and acquisitions).

—While Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific appear to be performing fine, that’s not so much the case for the smaller players that create most of the innovations the big boys acquire to keep growing. U.S. and European medical technology companies saw total industry financing drop 38 percent in 2008—although when E&Y subtracted two big European deals, the numbers looked a lot worse, with financing down 44 percent in Europe and 53 percent in the U.S. “One area where the growing chasm between medtech’s haves and have-nots is most visible is in fundraising,” the report says.

—Mergers and acquisitions, which are usually the only way medical device startups can make returns for their investors, showed a big-time decline in 2008. There were just 79 deals in 2008, down about 41 percent from the prior year.

—The IPO market was basically flat-lining, with medical device companies raising a puny …Next Page »

Comments (4) | Reprints | Share:        

A group of about 40 Taiwanese businessmen and scientists, who were in the U.S. to learn about how best to commercialize technologies from the lab, were treated last Thursday to a University of Washington panel of three veterans of the process, who shared their experiences and the lessons they’ve learned.

The panel consisted of serial entrepreneur and cleantech consultant Jeff Canin, neurological surgery and pediatric dentistry professor Pierre Mourad, and bioengineering professor Buddy Ratner. All three have been involved in several companies spun out of technology developed at UW, ranging from designing ultrasound toothbrushes to reprogramming skin cells into cells that can rebuild a heart after a heart attack, to improving how long beer can be stored without going bad (”one of the most important industries on this planet,” Ratner asserted).

Here were my Top 10 takeaways from the panel, which was moderated by Janis Machala of UW TechTransfer.

10. Bringing together money, talented managers, and good engineers is difficult.

9. Some of the stereotypes of scientists and business people have an unfortunate basis in truth. Ratner pointed out that many scientists can be tremendously naive, and often don’t realize that the technology they have is not a product—and that a lot has to be done to bridge that gap.

8. Mourad said (and the other panelists agreed) that the most important element to a successful company is the relationships between all the people involved. Citing the company that spun out of the ultrasound toothbrush technology, he said that even though the company raised about $23 million, infighting between management and the board destroyed the technologically very sound company.

7. Mourad cautioned that even though business people have all the money, “Treat tech people nicely,” to succeed.

6. Canin said that to be a good entrepreneur, a scientist or engineer must have a lot of …Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

This was another busy week on the Seattle biotech scene, with some takeover speculation surrounding the latest success story (Dendreon), a big pharmaceutical industry player moving to town (Covance), and a behind-the-scenes tale of how NanoString Technologies scored one of the bigger venture investments of the year.

—Christopher Henney, the former CEO of Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN), sat down for an exclusive interview with Xconomy about his former company, which ran in installments on Monday and Tuesday. Henney predicts that Seattle-based Dendreon, the developer of what many consider the first successful treatment to actively stimulate the immune system to fight cancer cells like a virus, might end up getting acquired, just like the two other successful companies he co-founded—Immunex and Icos.

—Covance (NYSE: CVD), the giant drug development services provider, agreed to acquire the last big piece that was unaccounted for in the breakup of Merck’s former Rosetta Inpharmatics operation in Seattle. Covance agreed to acquire the Gene Expression Laboratory at Rosetta, and according to CEO Joe Herring, this multi-national company has big growth plans for its new asset in Seattle.

—Seattle-based NanoString Technologies scored one of the bigger venture investments of the year when it got $30 million last month from Clarus Ventures, OVP Venture Partners, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Behind the scenes, the pivotal moment happened when a young principal at Clarus, who used to work at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA, heard glowing reviews from happy customers at that leading-edge genetics center.

—Stewart Lyman contributed some fascinating insight to the Xconomist Forum this week about what it is that made Genentech and his former employer, Immunex, such special places for biotech innovation. He has some suggestions on how new companies can replicate that culture of innovation, and they don’t involve any of the fancy shortcuts preferred by some of the industry’s financial backers.

—Targeted Growth CEO Tom Todaro offered an overview on the unusual strategy he has developed to capitalize on some intriguing basic research into cell division that has origins at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The Seattle company is splitting its resources in half between programs to boost yields of crops, and to create sources of alternative energy. A couple days after this feature ran, Targeted Growth announced it had found a way to significantly boost yields of algae for producing oil.

—AVI Biopharma (NASDAQ: AVII), the Portland, OR-based developer of RNA-based therapies, said it secured $1.2 million in funding from a U.K.-based charity that supports research into Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

—Seattle-based Cell Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CTIC), the developer of cancer drugs, closed on another round of financing that ultimately netted a little more than $40 million after expenses.

—Bothell, WA-based Sonosite (NASDAQ: SONO), the maker of portable ultrasound machines for medical diagnosis, said its sales declined 12 percent in the second quarter. It blamed the slowdown on reduced spending by U.S. hospitals.

—Seattle-based Calypso Medical Technologies, the maker of technology to pinpoint radiation therapy for prostate cancer patients, said it formed a collaboration with Palo Alto, CA-based Varian Medical Systems, to incorporate the Calypso technology into Varian’s radiation systems. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

SonoSite, the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, said today that its sales dropped 12 percent to $52.3 million in the second quarter. The company (NASDAQ: SONO) eked out a net income of $425,000, or 2 cents a share, in the period ending June 30. SonoSite blamed the declining sales on a slowdown in capital spending among U.S. hospitals.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

News flow in Seattle life sciences slowed down heading into the holiday weekend, so I rolled out a couple biotech and medical device features I’ve been meaning to clear off my to-do list for a while.

—Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN) raised $221 million last month to expand its manufacturing and marketing efforts for its prostate cancer drug, but that wasn’t the whole story. As we reported based on an exclusive interview with chief financial officer Greg Schiffman, the Seattle-based biotech company used that deal to transform the complexion of its shareholder base, to diminish the influence of fast-money hedge funds and short-sellers, and tilt the balance toward more long-term, buy-and-hold healthcare funds.

—I profiled PhysioSonics, a stealthy ultrasound company in Bellevue, WA. This company raised $2 million recently, and formed a strategic partnership with a large, unnamed healthcare company, in addition to a deal it cut last year with Johnson & Johnson Development. The company is developing a product that offers automated, continuous monitoring of blood flow in the brain, as an alternative to the ultrasound method that captures a single data point and requires the time and labor of a trained ultrasound technician.

—We had some tragic news this week about the sudden death of Stephen Quinn. He co-founded five companies in the past three years with University of Washington bioengineering professor Buddy Ratner. Quinn, 46, was recently profiled in these pages for his latest ambition, to build a company that would use stem cells to regenerate damaged heart tissue. A memorial service is scheduled for tonight in Sammamish, WA. For more information, check the comments at the end of the story.

—Seattle-based Cell Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CTIC) and Bothell, WA-based OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OGXI) said they joined the Russell 3000 index this week. The Russell indexes are widely used for index funds, and as benchmarks for actively managed funds.

—Washington state laboratories are working on 119 experimental drugs in clinical trials, according to a new report from We Work for Health, a partnership of drug companies and governments, as Eric reported. The most activity was found in cancer drug development, with 46 potential new medicines in the pipeline, according to the report. U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee and Gov. Chris Gregoire touted the findings in a press conference at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

It was a slow week for deals in the Northwest, with just a trickle of activity in software, Internet, and medical devices. We’ll see if things pick up after the holiday weekend.

—Bellevue, WA-based PhysioSonics raised $2 million in equity funding from undisclosed investors, as Luke reported. The maker of ultrasound technology for monitoring blood flow in the brain, led by chief executive Brad Harlow, previously raised $4 million last June from Johnson & Johnson Development Corp. Its device is designed to help doctors track the effects of drugs in stroke patients and people with head injuries, as Luke wrote in a company profile.

—Seattle-based Yapta, a travel website that tracks airfare and hotel prices, closed a $2 million Series B investment round led by Voyager Capital in Seattle. The round also included Swiftsure Capital, W Media Ventures, Bay Partners, and First Round Capital. Founded in 2006, Yapta is led by CEO Tom Romary and has raised $7.7 million in total funding.

— Seattle-based Escapia raised $1.6 million, led by existing investors including Steven D. Murch, Buerk Dale Victor, and Atlas Accelerator, as Eric reported. Escapia, founded in 2000, hosts online vacation rental software. The new funds will be used to expand the software’s capabilities and customer base.

—Rachel took a closer look at what Seattle-based energy efficiency firm Powerit Solutions is doing with its recent funding—$6 million last month from Siemens Venture Capital, ArcelorMittal, @Ventures, and Expansion Capital Partners. The short answer: it is expanding globally, but carefully. Powerit (pronounced Power-eye-tee) makes hardware and software to help industrial facilities monitor their energy use and adjust it according to changes in electricity rates.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Walk into a hospital with the telltale symptoms of a stroke, and chances are you’ll get something called a transcranial Doppler ultrasound test. This tool uses ultrasound waves to look inside the brain, noninvasively, to see how fast blood is flowing.

What’s important about that? It’s a useful technique to see whether a clot or piece of scar tissue is gumming things up, potentially causing trouble. The same goes for examining people with head injuries from car accidents, or to check if you are recovering well, or not, from brain surgery.

Any standard ultrasound machine can do this procedure, but it takes a skilled ultrasound technician between 5 and 15 minutes to get a single snapshot of data. What if you could make an automated machine that continuously monitors trends of blood flow in the brain for hours at a time? Wouldn’t that cut down on labor costs, and probably give you a more accurate set of data points to analyze how a patient is doing? Would it be easy enough to take readouts before and after surgery, or before and after drugs are given, to see how well treatment really worked?

That’s the concept driving Bellevue, WA-based PhysioSonics. This company is developing the first tool that’s supposed to give that automated, continuous recording of brain blood flow in the hospital. The company made news a year ago when it received a $4 million investment led by Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., and this month it secured some more financing along with a second strategic partnership with a large, unnamed healthcare company, says CEO Brad Harlow. PhysioSonics isn’t saying much yet about how much proof it has amassed behind this concept, but the company is now making the machines, and is preparing to apply for FDA approval to sell them.

“This will make it so you don’t have …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

PhysioSonics, the Bellevue, WA-based developer of ultrasound technology for monitoring blood flow in the brain for patients with stroke or traumatic brain injury, has raised $2 million in equity out of a $4 million offering, according to a regulatory filing. The company, a University of Washington spinout, is led by CEO Brad Harlow. It raised $4 million last June from Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation. It lists Harlow, Robert Frederickson, Lauren Pflugrath, and Scott Moonly as directors.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

We had a smorgasbord of life sciences news this week, featuring updates on Northwest companies developing drugs, devices, vaccines, and scientific instruments.

—Cell Therapeutics has bet the company on pixantrone for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and this week it hit one of its key goals for the year, by turning in its new drug application to the FDA before the end of June. The Seattle company (NASDAQ: CTIC) fell short in its bid to unload all of its $118.9 million in debt, instead getting rid of about $52.9 million of its liabilities.

—Seattle-based Targeted Genetics (NASDAQ: TGEN) has been in survival mode for some time now, and this week it said it will cut its staff down to as little as 10 to 15 employees. The company hopes the cuts will stretch its cash reserves into August, giving it enough time to close a deal to keep the company from closing its doors.

—Sanofi-Aventis CEO Chris Viehbacher traveled to Seattle last week for a global health meeting, and took time to offer a glimpse into his strategy to make the Paris-based drugmaker a bigger player in global health. He also shared his perspective on partnerships with biotech companies.

—Seattle-based Amnis shared its story of how it has rolled out a second-generation version of its sophisticated lab instrument, which combines properties of a microscope with a high-speed cell counter called a flow cytometer. Orders are building up, and this could be the company’s first full year of profitability after a decade in business, says CEO David Basiji.

—Oncothyreon (NASDAQ: ONTY), the Seattle-based developer of cancer drugs, said that its German partner, Merck KGaA, started up a pivotal trial of its immune-boosting therapy, Stimuvax. It’s the second big trial of this drug, which is already being tested against lung cancer. If it’s successful, Oncothyreon will stand to get royalties on product sales.

—AVI Biopharma (NASDAQ: AVII), the Portland, OR-based developer of RNA-based therapies, said it is working on a contract to develop swine flu drugs.

—Bothell, WA-based Mirabilis Medica told its story about how it is developing the first use of high-intensity therapeutic ultrasound waves to treat uterine fibroids, as a non-invasive alternative to surgery.

—MDRNA (NASDAQ: MRNA), the Bothell, WA-based developer of RNA interference drugs, gained full rights to a technology license from Denmark-based RiboTask to make its treatments more stable, and less likely to spark inflammation.

—Global health funding has quadrupled over the past two decades, and while a lot of this new money comes from foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest financier of this work is now the U.S. taxpayer, according to this intriguing new study from the University of Washington.

—Anthony Fauci, the head of the division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called for a transformative research agenda to fight tuberculosis, like the country did for HIV in the 1980s, during a stop last week at the Pacific Health Summit in Seattle.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

It only takes about 30 minutes from downtown Seattle to get to what some people like to call the “Silicon Valley of Ultrasound,” in Bothell, WA. So when I heard about another ultrasound startup company, one with a name that comes from the Latin word for “miraculous,” I figured it was worth checking out.

There’s actually a lot more substance to the story than that. Bothell, WA-based Mirabilis Medica doesn’t claim to have achieved any miracles. But it has a pretty ambitious goal. Its team of engineers are building an ultrasound machine that is supposed to offer a non-invasive way to get rid of uterine fibroids. The technology has potential to help relieve symptoms of these painful growths in the uterus that are the leading reason so many women get hysterectomies after their childbearing years.

The problem, and market opportunity, is a big one. As many as one out of five women in the U.S. suffer from fibroids, according to the National Institutes of Health. Women can take drugs, or get a couple of different surgical procedures, but the only cure is a radical one—complete removal of the uterus, a hysterectomy. About 625,000 women get hysterectomies in the U.S. each year, and about half of the time it is because they have uterine fibroid growths that cause painful cramping and bleeding, says Mirabilis CEO Mike Connolly. So if Mirabilis can come up with a way to get rid of these fibroids, without a doctor having to pull out a scalpel, it forecasts it will tap into a new market worth $1 billion a year.

“Right now, it’s basically like doctors are hitting a fly with a sledgehammer,” Connolly says.

Mirabilis, like practically every ultrasound company in Bothell, can trace its family tree to the University of Washington. The company got started in 2004, by Alex Lebedev on business, Shahram Vaezy on technology, and Michael Lau, a practicing gynecologist in Edmonds, WA, on the medical side. Connolly joined the company in October 2006, after he got an up-close look at the technology when he was a principal with vSpring Capital, an early investor. Besides vSpring, the company has raised about $11 million since the beginning from Charter Life Sciences, Arboretum Ventures, Split Rock Partners, and Dow Chemical.

The Mirabilis technology has two critical components. One uses the diffuse, low-intensity waves of diagnostic ultrasound to help doctors look inside the body and pinpoint the location of the fibroids. The other element is a high-intensity, tightly-focused therapeutic wave of ultrasound. That part is supposed to heat up tissue just enough to kill fibroid cells without causing any collateral damage or side effects.

Mirabilis has about 10 employees, including some engineers from one of the few successful therapeutic ultrasound companies, Liposonix, which uses ultrasound for body sculpting. The technical challenge …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Sonosite (NASDAQ: SONO), the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, announced today it will purchase San Diego-based CardioDynamics International (NASDAQ: CDIC), a developer and manufacturer of noninvasive medical diagnostic tools for cardiovascular disease. SonoSite paid $1.35 per share in cash, or about $10 million. The total deal is worth $12.3 million when accounting for cash and debt. CardioDynamics generated $24.5 million in revenue last year, and had a net loss of $3.2 million.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

SonoSite, the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, said today in its first-quarter financial report that its annual revenue for 2009 may be flat to down 10 percent compared with the previous year. The company (NASDAQ: SONO) said it is responding by cutting expenses 5 to 10 percent, a deeper round of cuts than the previous range it announced, of as much as 5 percent. It blamed dropping demand at U.S. hospitals, and less favorable foreign currency exchange rates.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

Seattle biotech had a little something for everybody this past week. There was drama (Dendreon), politics (Life Sciences Discovery Fund getting whacked), a scientist’s life story (David Baker), and young competitors vying to make the world a better place (UW Environmental Innovation Challenge).

—Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN), the Seattle developer of an immune-stimulating therapy for prostate cancer, has been waiting for months to see whether its drug can help men live longer with minimal side effects. This month, it will find out, and this long-running saga could take yet another twist.

—Gov. Chris Gregoire staked much of her economic development strategy on the 10-year, $350 million Life Sciences Discovery Fund, and now the fund is in jeopardy of being shut down, as we reported in this exclusive. Lawmakers are still ironing out the differences between bills to see how deep to cut. The legislative session is scheduled to end April 26.

—I took out some time to profile one of the leading innovators at the University of Washington, biochemistry professor David Baker. His lab has been fascinated for years by how a linear sequence of genetic code gets transformed into a 3-D protein structure. The Baker lab has gotten good enough at this that it can now design new proteins from scratch on a computer, with potential to do things like create new cellulosic biofuels.

—Elsewhere on campus, we reported on the winners of the first-ever UW Environmental Innovation Challenge. The winning team, calling themselves HydroSense, envision a way to help consumers monitor their household water consumption in real-time, which ought to help people better conserve this precious resource.

—VLST and Novo Nordisk are cementing their new partnership to …Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

SonoSite, the Bothell, WA-based maker of portable ultrasound machines, said today that worldwide sales fell 1 to 2 percent in the first quarter, in a preliminary earnings report. Sales to U.S. hospitals fell by a “mid-teen percentage,” and overseas sales were weakened by foreign currency exchange rates, the company said. The company saw grown in its U.S. enterprise sales channel to offset other declines. SonoSite (NASDAQ: SONO) expects to report full earnings on April 27.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

It’s rough out there, as everyone knows. Yesterday, Dow Jones VentureWire ran a story about venture-backed companies that have shut down this year. Their list includes three Seattle-area firms. Before we see too many more of these reports, Xconomy would like to start gathering lessons learned from startups, investors, and observers. Many people still seem worried about the stigma of failure, even though it’s a normal (and necessary) part of a healthy ecosystem. We want to hear your stories.

—Bellevue, WA-based Sotto Wireless has been winding down operations for the past eight months and is now out of business, according to VentureWire. The wireless service provider, led by former McCaw Cellular exec Rod Nelson, was developing software to help mobile devices connect to cell and broadband networks as you move around. Sotto had raised nearly $14 million in venture funding from Bellevue-based Ignition Partners and Silicon Valley-based VantagePoint Venture Partners. That includes an $8 million Series A round in 2006.

It’s obviously a setback for Ignition and VantagePoint. But in the past two weeks, Ignition—which has taken its lumps lately, having backed the bankrupt Seattle firm Entellium—has invested in California startups Enclarity and Zenprise. And VantagePoint recently raised $435 million for its second venture fund; one of the firm’s focus areas is cleantech and alternative energy.

—Seattle-based TeachFirst, an educational training company, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to VentureWire. The company was founded in 2000 by Sandi Everlove and Don Nielsen, to improve teacher training and student learning by using video libraries and collaboration resources. TeachFirst was backed by angel investors and small funds with an educational focus.

—Redmond, WA-based Ultreo, maker of an electric toothbrush that uses ultrasound to help clean your teeth, has closed after failing to find a buyer or additional investor, according to VentureWire. (Northwest Innovation reported the company auctioned off its assets last month.) Ultreo was founded in 2003 and had raised some $28 million in venture funding, including an $11.3 million investment in May 2007 from Polaris Venture Partners, Buerk Dale Victor, WRF Capital, and angel investors. Led by Jack Gallagher, Ultreo competed with industry leader Sonicare, which is owned by Royal Philips Electronics, in the sonic toothbrush market.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share: