A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Nanosphere (Northbrook, Illinois), a nanotechnology firm, Monday filed for an initial public offering, hoping to raise up to $100 million.

Nanosphere makes a genetic-testing system, and is developing diagnostic tests for a variety of medical conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.

Current genetic testing techniques are complex and are usually performed only at specialized labs or academic research centers. Nanosphere says it is aiming to commercialize a low-cost testing system that would be sold to hospitals.

The company plans to use about $50 million from the offering to finance research and to develop its product manufacturing, according to the IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Another $40 million would be earmarked for marketing, while any remaining money would be used for working capital and other general costs.

Founded nine years ago, Nanopshere said it has raised more than $100 million in private money, including a $57 million venture capital investment last year from a group led by Bain Capital (Boston). Lurie Investments (Chicago), Nanosphere's founding investor, is a major shareholder in the company.

So far, Nanosphere's revenues, which were just over $1 million last year, have come primarily from research contracts and government grants, with "minimal" sales stemming from its actual genetic testing system, according to the filing.

The firm's future revenues — and any profits, which it doesn't have now — depend on getting regulatory approval for its testing systems and then commercializing them, the filing said.

Underwriters for Nanosphere's planned IPO are Credit Suisse, Piper Jaffray, Leerink Swann, and Allen.

In other financings news:

Monitoring product maker Masimo (Irvine, California) has closed its previously disclosed initial public offering of 11.9 million shares at $17 a share.

The company also said that the underwriters of the offering have exercised their over-allotment option and bought 1,787,494 additional shares of common stock.

Including the over-allotment, the company and selling stockholders sold 13,704,120 shares in the offering for gross proceeds of $232.9 million. Excluding shares offered by selling shareholders, net proceeds to the company amounted to about $48 million after deducting the underwriting discounts and commission and the estimated offering expenses.

The company reported pricing its IPO last week, saying that it expected to raise about $48.5 million if the underwriters exercised the over-allotment option in full. Masimo filed for its IPO in April.

Masimo plans to use the proceeds for sales and marketing activities, capital expenditures, research and development, including clinical studies, and for general corporate purposes. The company may also use a portion of the proceeds for the acquisition of or investment in companies, technologies or products that complement the business.

The company invented Masimo Signal Extraction Technology, or Masimo SET, which provides the capabilities of read-through motion and low perfusion pulse oximetry to address the primary limitations of conventional pulse oximetry. Pulse oximetry is the noninvasive measurement of the oxygen saturation level of arterial blood, or the blood that delivers oxygen to the body's tissues, and pulse rate.

Piper Jaffray, Deutsche Bank Securities and Citigroup Global Markets acted as joint book running managers for the offering. Cowen and Company and Thomas Weisel Partners acted as co-managers of the offering.

Masimo develops monitoring technologies intended to significantly improve patient care.

• Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, Massachusetts) said its board has authorized the repurchase of $700 million of shares of its common stock, in the open market or in negotiated transactions, through Aug. 8, 2008.

This new authorization, combined with the previous stock repurchase authorization of $300 million through Feb. 28, 2008 — under which no shares have been purchased to date — brings the company's current total stock buyback authorization to $1 billion.

Thermo Fisher Scientific said it serves more than 350,000 customers within pharmaceutical and biotech companies, hospitals and clinical diagnostic labs, universities, research institutions and government agencies, as well as environmental and industrial process control settings.

• The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG; Pittsburgh) reported that it has invested a total of $350,000 in three Pittsburgh-based companies: Celsense, Glucose Sensing Technologies, and Falcon Genomics.

The PLSG's $150,000 investment in Falcon Genomics will support the validation of the Cancer BioChip System (CBCS), a high throughput assay system for individualized cancer target identification and validation using silencing RNA.

The PLSG's $100,000 investment in Glucose Sensing Technologies will support the development and testing in vitro of a prototype catheter that will be used to continually measure blood glucose levels in an intensive care unit (ICU) setting.

The PLSG's $100,000 investment in Celsense will be used to help the company further the commercialization of Cell Sense, its flagship product. Cell Sense is an MRI tracer agent that labels cells in culture. When labeled cells are transferred to a living subject, the transplanted cells can be imaged in their anatomical context using MRI.

The PLSG, a public/private partnership, invests in and supports the growth of biosciences companies in southwestern Pennsylvania.

• Illumina (San Diego) reported that a resale registration statement has been filed on Form S-3 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its prior sale of $400 million aggregate principal amount of its 0.625% convertible senior notes due 2014. The registration statement became effective automatically upon filing and registers the offer and sale, by the security holders identified in the registration statement, of the notes and the shares of common stock underlying the notes. The notes were initially sold to qualified institutional buyers in an offering that closed in February 2007.

Illumina makes next-generation life science tools and integrated systems for the large scale analysis of genetic variation and biological function.

• Diagnostics company Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, California) reported that, as required by its December 2006 convertible notes offering, it filed a registration statement with the SEC for the resale by selling security holders of $600 million aggregate principal amount of its 2.50% convertible senior notes due 2036 and the common stock issuable under certain circumstances upon conversion of the notes. The registration statement became effective immediately upon filing. Beckman Coulter will not receive any proceeds from the resale of any of the securities by the selling security holders.