Venture Funding for Health Care Companies Kept Flowing in January (February 25, 2008)

Avalon Laboratories, a leading supplier of disposable cardiopulmonary vascular cannulae, which provide connections between patients and life support machines, secured $66 million of growth capital, the largest venture round announced by a health care company in January. American Capital Strategies made the investment, which is in the form of a senior term loan, senior subordinated debt and convertible preferred and common equity. Tethys Bioscience announced the next-largest financing of the month, with $54 million, which represents the total venture capital raised by the company to date, as of the closing of its Series C financing. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Intel Capital and other investors provided the funding. Tethys is a biotech focused on discovering, developing and commercializing technologies based on biomarkers of chronic metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, for use in predictive medicine. Alder Biopharmaceuticals, which is focused on developing proprietary, antibody-based therapeutics, secured $40 million in Series C financing to support the advancement of its lead candidate through multiple proof-of-concept trials, to broaden its pipeline and enhance its discovery and manufacturing technologies. Sevin Rosen Funds, Ventures West, H.I.G. Ventures and WRF Capital participated in the round announced by Alder. Also in the top five health care venture capital deals for the month, Endotis Pharma raised $36.9 million in Series B funding, from The Wellcome Trust, Endeavour Vision, NIF SMBC Ventures and Sofinnova Partners. The proceeds are to support the ongoing development of its portfolio of preclinical and clinical-stage compounds, including three in-licensed from Organon/Schering Plough that are based on oligosaccharides and being developed for the prevention of arterial thrombosis, as well as others discovered in-house. Genizon BioSciences, a company that has developed maps of genes and biomarkers involved in schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, endometriosis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease, and is currently doing studies in rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, type II diabetes, dyslipidemia and hypertension, raised the fifth-largest round announced in January. The biotech secured $31 million in Series E financing from BTF B.V.

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