A Medical Device Daily

Illumina (San Diego), which filed for a 3.5 million share offering last week (Medical Device Daily, May 15, 2006), reported that it pulled down net proceeds of about $83.6 million at an offering price of $25.50 per share, and said it aims to use the money partly to boost diagnostics work.

“You can see the direction we're going by the deCode [Reykjavik, Iceland] deal we announced [last] Monday,” Jay Flatley, president and CEO of Illumina, told MDD's sister publication BioWorld Today. With deCode, Illumina plans to co-develop and commercialize DNA-based diagnostic tests in several major disease areas, including heart attack, diabetes and breast cancer.

The deal will use Illumina's platform for high-multiplex single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping to develop tests for gene variants deCODE has investigated. Under the terms, Illumina gets access to disease-related biomarkers for joint validation as diagnostic panels to be sold by Illumina on its forthcoming BeadXpress platform. The companies will share development costs and split the profits from sales of the tests.

The deCode agreement is “certainly going to keep us busy, but we have others that we're talking about,” said Flatley. “If our business plans are met, we would be sufficiently cash flow positive that we would not have to raise money in any time frame we could think about,” he added.

Money from the current offering also will go toward general corporate purposes. Before the offering, as of April 2, Illumina had about $49 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co. are acting as joint bookrunning and co-lead managers of the offering. Cowen and Co. is co-lead manager of the offering. Robert W. Baird & Co., of Chicago, is co-manager.

ImaRx Therapeutics (Tucson, Arizona) has filed with the SEC for an IPO of up to $75 million, with the number of shares to be determined later.

The company is developing therapies for vascular disorders associated with blood clots. Its development efforts are primarily focused on therapies for treating ischemic stroke and massive pulmonary embolism by restoring the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain and vital tissues, and clearing occluded catheters.

The company is pursuing two development programs as the foundation for its products. The first program is a group of clot-dissolving drugs, or thrombolytics, that are variants of urokinase, a natural human protein primarily produced in the kidneys that stimulates the body's natural clot-dissolving processes.

The second program, SonoLysis therapy, centers on a treatment that breaks blood clots apart by applying ultrasound to the company' submicron-sized bubbles, which it calls SonoLysis bubbles.

ImaRx licensed the oxygen delivery technology that is being incorporated with its SonoLysis therapy from Sonus Pharmaceuticals (Bothell, Washington) last year (MDD, July 12, 2006).

The company obtained rights to four patents covering Sonus' fluorocarbon technology, including both composition of matter patents and patents directed to methods of using the technology to deliver oxygen for therapeutic applications. ImaRx is to pay royalties to Sonus upon commercialization of any resulting products.

In other financing news

• Nanosphere (Northbrook, Illinois), a nanotechnology-based molecular diagnostics company founded upon technology discovered at Northwestern University (Chicago), reported that it has closed $57 million in a Series D financing, led by Bain Capital.

The company said it will use the proceeds to commercialize the Verigene system, a platform for direct genomic testing that it said eliminates the need for polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and to continue development and commercialization of its BiobarcodeT technology for ultra-sensitive detection of proteins and nucleic acids.

The investment from Bain Capital was comprised of funds from Bain Capital Ventures and Brookside Capital. Other investors in the round include Allen & Co. and founding investor Lurie Investments.

“Commercialization is the next step for our company,” said William Moffitt, CEO of Nanosphere. “We've validated our core technology and delivered early versions to customers, and now we're focused on clinical trials in preparation for an anticipated commercial launch later this year. This funding will help ensure our ability to launch the Verigene system and to develop additional opportunities for commercialization.”

With the closing of this latest round, James Nahirny and Jeffrey Crisan from Bain Capital were added to the company's board of directors.

• Privately held Cardiva Medical (Mountain View, California) said it has closed a $13.99 million Series C financing.

Cardiva's focus is on developing vascular access management and closure devices.

The financing was led by Galen Partners; and included existing investors Stockton Partners, Sycamore Ventures, Harbinger VC Corp., W.I. Harper Group, and Amkey Ventures.

The Boomerang wire system has been cleared by the FDA to assist clinicians in managing and closing femoral artery puncture sites, following percutaneous procedures including angiography, angioplasty or stenting. The system has also obtained the CE mark.

• Bausch & Lomb (B&L; Rochester, New York) reported that holders of a majority of outstanding principal amount of the four issues of the company's debt and convertible debt for which a consent deadline has recently passed have delivered consents to proposed amendments to the note indentures and the waiver of specified defaults.

The company indicated that about $37 million aggregate principal amount of its senior notes have been tendered to date in its tender offers, which will expire June 2.

On May 3, the company reported its intention to initiate cash tender offers and consent solicitations for three issues of outstanding debt securities totaling about $384 million and consent solicitations with respect to two issues of outstanding convertible debt totaling about $160 million.

The consent solicitations (including those that were made as part of the tender offers) offered holders a fee in exchange for their consent to proposed amendments to the indenture for each issue of notes that would, among other things, extend to Oct. 2 for purposes of the indentures, the company's deadlines to file periodic reports with the SEC and to deliver compliance certificates to the trustee under each indenture.

The consent deadline for all issues was originally established as May 17, and the company subsequently extended that deadline to May 24 for its 7.125% debentures due 2028.