A Medical Device Daily

ViewRay (Oakwood Village, Ohio) reported the close of the second tranche of their $25 million Series B financing. Funding was triggered by the company's achievement of a major milestone towards the development of their image guided cancer therapy device, the Renaissance system. The financing was led by OrbiMed Advisors and Fidelity Biosciences, and was joined by Aisling Capital and Kearny Venture Partners.

"These funds will allow us to continue developing our novel radiation therapy device for the treatment of cancer patients. We believe our system's simultaneous real-time volumetric imaging may provide a tremendous clinical advantage over systems in use today," said James Dempsey, MD, founder and inventor of the technology, and CSO of the company.

Additionally, the company said it has entered into an exclusive development and supply agreement with Siemens (Erlangen, Germany), Healthcare Sector for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. This collaboration will accelerate the development of the Renaissance system the companies said.

"We are excited to work with ViewRay to explore the capabilities of MR beyond diagnostics and into the field of radiation therapy with a clear goal to improve therapy treatment to the benefit of the patient," said Walter Marzendorfer, head of Magnetic Resonance, Siemens, Healthcare Sector.

ViewRay is developing an advanced system to treat cancer patients. The Renaissance system technology will continuously image the patient in three dimensions during radiation therapy delivery. This real time imaging will control the delivery of the radiation therapy and record the dose delivered to the patient, allowing physicians to potentially reduce side effects and improve cure rates.

In other financing news, Cell Therapeutics (Seattle) reported that it has agreed to sell up to $20 million of Series 1 preferred stock and warrants in a registered offering to a single institutional investor. The investor initially purchased, for $15 million cash, shares of Series 1 preferred stock with a stated value of $15 million and certain associated common stock warrants and has the right to, within 60 days, purchase for an additional $5 million cash additional shares of the stock with a stated value of $5 million with no additional warrants. The stock is convertible into shares of common stock at a conversion price of 30 cents. The investor received 45% warrant coverage on the initial $15 million purchase. The warrants have an exercise price of 41 cents per share, for total potential additional proceeds of about $9 million. About three-fifths of the warrants cannot be exercised until after six months from issuance, or 61 days from issuance if the investor does not exercise its option to purchase the additional Series 1 preferred stock.

Separately, the company said it reacquired the remaining 100 outstanding shares ($100,000 stated value) of its Series A 3% convertible preferred stock in exchange for 288,517 shares of common stock, and the company has agreed to reacquire the remaining 1,000 outstanding shares ($1million stated value) of its Series D 7% preferred stock in exchange for shares of common stock based on a formula keyed to the volume-weighted average price over a 3-day period following April 13, 2009.