Vertex Scores $105M For Asian Telaprevir Rights, Avila Avails Itself of $30M, IBM Picks Up Ounce Labs, & More Boston-Area Deals News
Summary
—Drug developer Avila Therapeutics, also of Waltham, closed a $30 million Series B round of venture capital led by the Novartis Option Fund. —Waltham’s Phase Forward (NASDAQ: PFWD), a provider of software for data collection and analysis during clinical trials, acquired Indianapolis, IN-based Maaguzi for $11 million in cash. —Dana-Farber Cancer Institute spinoff MSM Protein Technologies announced partnerships with Germany’s Merck KGaA, and Switzerland’s Debiopharm Group. The deals will give the European firms access to the Medford, MA-based startup’s technology for analyzing complicated biological molecules called multi-spanning membrane proteins, which are the targets of many drugs. The agreement gives Mitsubishi rights to sell and manufacture Vertex’s experimental hepatitis C treatment, telaprevir, for use in combination with the existing drugs interferon and ribavirin in Japan and the Far East.
