A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

SV Life Sciences (SVLS; London/Boston/San Francisco), formerly Schroder Ventures Life Sciences, reported final closing of SV Life Sciences Fund IV (SVLS IV) with total commitments of $572 million.

The fund was significantly oversubscribed, and SVLS said it decided to limit the final size. SVLS IV, SVLS's fourth international life sciences fund, brings the firm's total funds advised or managed to $1.6 billion, making it one of the largest venture capital investment groups dedicated to the life sciences sector, it said.

SLVS said the investment strategy of SVLS IV remains consistent with that of earlier funds. SVLS IV will be focused on providing start-up, early-stage and expansion capital to private life sciences companies in the U.S. and Europe, investing across a range of life sciences sectors, including biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, medical devices, healthcare services and healthcare information technology. Anticipated investment size will typically be between $5 and $25 million.

Of the total commitments, about 60% came from the U.S. and 40% from Europe and rest of world, SVLS said.

Illumina (San Diego) reported the closing of $400 million principal amount of 0.625% convertible senior notes, due 2014, including the exercise of the underwriters' over-allotment option to purchase an additional $50 million of notes.

Net proceeds from this offering were about $390.3 million.

The company said it used about $202 million of the proceeds from this offering to purchase shares of its common stock in privately transactions with this offering, with about $46.6 million of the proceeds used to fund the net cost of the convertible note hedge transactions and warrant transactions that it entered into with the initial purchasers of the notes and/or their affiliates.

The company said it intends to use the balance of the proceeds for other corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and additional purchases of its common stock.

Illumina is developing tools for the large-scale analysis of genetic variation and function.

In other financing activity:

  • Sysmex America (Mundelein, Illinois) reported obtaining exclusive rights to market and distribute the Diesse Ves-Matic Cube 200 System in the U.S. through an agreement with Diesse Diagnostica Senese (Siena, Italy) and its supplier, Diesse (Hialeah, Florida).

Sysmex is expected to introduce the Diesse Ves-Matic Cube 200 to the U.S. market this year, with the system first being unveiled at the CLMA ThinkLab '07 in Houston next month. The system can run up to 200 samples per hour, improving turn-around time without consuming or coming into contact with any sample, the company said.

Diesse has developed a method for determining the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Based on this technology, Diesse developed the Ves-Matic system, which reduces the turn-around time of ESR testing by more than 50% and eliminates direct exposure to blood samples. The Ves-Matic Cube System offers added safety through the use of non-glass tubes and small sample volume requirements.

  • Healthvision (Irving Texas), a healthcare information technology solutions provider, said it has received an investment — the amount undisclosed — from VeriSign (Mountain View, California), a provider of digital infrastructure for networks.

The companies said they will work to integrate current VeriSign technologies into the current Healthvision solution suite and work to develop new healthcare information infrastructure solutions.

"Healthvision is focused on connecting healthcare communities by building health information exchanges among providers, hospitals, labs and patients," said Scott Decker, president/CEO of Healthvision. "By leveraging VeriSign's resources and proven global digital infrastructure, Healthvision's health information exchange platform will bring unmatched data exchange and communication capabilities to connected healthcare communities."

The agreement establishes joint sales opportunities whereby Healthvision will support the adoption of current VeriSign services into the healthcare market, and they will explore joint development projects based on their technologies and capabilities to develop a solution for healthcare communities offering secure, real-time, industry-compliant communications and information exchange.

Matt Niehaus, the Health and Life Sciences Lead of Verisign added: "the healthcare industry has escalating needs around secure, scalable information exchange … and we believe our investment in Healthvision will be a force multiplier enabling the creation of the next-generation of healthcare information infrastructure."

  • HealthSouth (Birmingham) said that it is seeking certain amendments to its existing senior secured credit facilities that include reducing the margin over LIBOR that the company pays as interest under the existing Term Loan B. The outstanding balance on the Term Loan B is about $2.04 billion.

"The amendment is seeking the appropriate approvals for our divestiture activities and we are pleased to take this step in our previously announced strategic repositioning efforts," said John Workman, HealthSouth's CFO.

HealthSouth is a major provider of inpatient ehabilitative services, outpatient rehabilitation centers, surgery centers, and diagnostic imaging centers.