Versant Ventures names Guido Magni as venture partner, expands in Europe

Versant Ventures said Monday it has appointed Dr. Guido Magni, a scientist and biopharmaceutical clinical development expert, as a venture partner.
The Menlo Park-based venture capital firm said the move is expected to further strengthen its investment team and expand its biotechnology footprint in Europe and other countries. Magni plans to invest in innovative startups as part of Versant’s strategy to fund first-in-class health care technologies.
The firm has $1.6 billion in capital under management.

Veracyte thyroid test gets boost with Genzyme deal

When biotech drug developer Genzyme Corp. said Friday that it will market a thyroid nodule analysis test, South San Francisco-based Veracyte Inc. got a big boost.
Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Genzyme’s promotion means the Afirma test from Veracyte will get higher visibility. Genzyme, which was bought last year by French drug developer Sanofi, markets Thyrogen for patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer.
After a Johns Hopkins study last year found that Afirma’s use could save money for the health care system, I spoke with Veracyte co-founder and CEO Bonnie Anderson.

Industry view: Changes to business model come slowly to biotech

Entering the fifth year of a funding crisis, biotech’s business model is changing.
Slowly.
New sources of early-stage cash are stepping into the void left by fleeing venture capitalists. But whether those relatively small investments — or corporate venture capital, or grants from disease-specific foundations — are enough to build sustainable companies is an open question.
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You're so vain: Baby boomers, tech and lower risk for investors pump up aesthetics, vanity market

Kerry Pope wants to liberate women — and make some money in the process.
Pope’s Palo Alto company, Viveve Inc., is launching a product that promises to tighten vaginal tissue stretched by childbirth and return women’s sex lives to pre-child days. The half-hour radiofrequency technology procedure, already used to tighten saggy facial skin, allows women to return home or to work with nary anyone else the wiser for it.
“It’s all about her,” Pope said.
It also is about opportunity.
Vain baby boomers looking to suck, heat, squeeze or freeze their way toward the fountain of youth are pumping up a $10 billion-a-year market. Lower regulatory risk for companies and investors, a new wave of technologies and consumers willing to pay out of pocket are fattening up the industry as well.
Call it the aesthetics, personal care or vanity market, but one thing is sure: Even in a tough economy, a cadre of Bay Area companies with science-backed, minimally invasive methods for smoothing wrinkles, removing love handles or even restoring couples’ sex lives are tapping consumer lust for younger days.

Tiny Quanticel seeks big cancer impact

Steve Kaldor believes in “personalized medicine,” depending on your definition.
If it involves the idea of delivering customized treatment to individual patients, Kaldor is skeptical of the economics. But his Quanticel Pharmaceuticals Inc., a young San Francisco company emerging with backing from Versant Ventures and a $45 million deal with Celgene Inc., is readying a technology that at least could narrow the odds for cancer patients.
Spun out of the work of Stanford University scientists Stephen Quake and Michael Clarke, Quanticel’s technology allows researchers to analyze in “exquisite detail” individual cells from tumor samples, Kaldor said. That could give unique insight into how to target cancer-fighting drugs as well as speed up clinical trials and identify novel new drugs.

Spine repair device maker Benvenue Medical raises $35.5M

Benvenue Medical Inc. said Monday it closed a third round of funding with $35.5 million.
The Santa Clara company, which develops minimally invasive solutions for spine repair, said it is entering a $9 billion global spinal device market with three breakthrough minimally invasive products to treat vertebral compression fractures and degenerative disc disease.
The round was co-led by new investors, San Diego-based Domain Associates and Palo Alto-based Technology Partners.
Also participating were Versant Ventures and DeNovo Ventures, which both have offices in Menlo Park.

One-on-one with Versant Ventures' Kevin Wasserstein

Kevin Wasserstein gets a charge from neuromodulation. Of the 75 companies in the portfolio of Versant Ventures, where Wasserstein is a managing director, and the $1.6 billion in committed capital that Versant manages, this area of managing and manipulating the network controlled by the brain is getting a lot of attention. I caught up with Wasserstein, a mechanical engineer by training who has been with Versant for about nine years, to chat about Menlo Park-based Versant’s interest in neuromodulation, why it’s excited about Autonomic Technologies and how regulators treat medical device innovation.