$16.5 million more for MicroCHIPS, to get trials started for its implantable device
Pastor Dale Morgan
$16.5 million more for MicroCHIPS, to get trials started for its
implantable device
* Posted by Scott Kirsner January 7, 2010 09:00 AM
Investors are handing another $16.5 million to MicroCHIPS, the
Bedford-based start-up that has spent over a decade developing a new
kind of implantable medical device capable of delivering drugs inside
the body or sensing changing disease states. InterWest Partners is a new
participant in this round, joining local firms Polaris Venture Partners,
Flybridge Capital Partners, and corporate investors like Novartis and
Medtronic.
This round, designated as the C round, brings the company's total
funding to "just over $70 million," according to founder and CEO John
Santini. It closed in October, Santini says, but the company is just
announcing it today. "What can I say? We've been busy," he quips.
Since the company spun out of an MIT lab in 1999, MicroCHIPS has been
chasing a futuristic vision: use implanted chips to dispense drugs over
time, or expose sensors to the body's chemistry -- and allow doctors or
patients to monitor and control the chips wirelessly.
The new funding will help support clinical trials -- the company's first
in human patients -- in diabetes and osteoporosis.
Santini also tells me that some of the money MicroCHIPS has raised is
going toward a joint venture: a new company it created in collaboration
with InterWest called On Demand Therapeutics, based in the San Francisco
Bay area and led by Naveed Shams, a former executive at Genentech and
OPKO Health. The ultra-stealthy On Demand, which will focus on
delivering drugs to the eye, was formed last year but doesn't have its
own Web site yet. (Here's an SEC filing that mentions the company, though.)
I spoke with Santini earlier this week about the funding and the
company's 2010 plans.
Santini said that the diabetes trial will involve a MicroCHIPS device
that can track glucose levels in the blood -- no needle-pokes required
-- and report the data wirelessly to a handheld monitor. It'll be able
to operate for about a year. The osteoporosis trial will deliver
parathyroid hormone to the spine, to help grow new bone. In both trials,
the MicroCHIPS device will be implanted in an outpatient procedure,
using local anesthetic. Eventually, Santini says, the company hopes to
test devices that combine sensing capability with the ability to deliver
doses of a drug, but for now those functions are separate.
The new funding round coalesced last fall because investors were pleased
with MicroCHIPS' "good pre-clinical results on both programs," Santini says.
January will be a big travel month for Santini: he's off to the big J.P.
Morgan healthcare schmoozefest in San Francisco next week, and then off
to the World Economic Forum in Davos later in the month, where he's
being recognized as one of the forum's "Technology Pioneers."