A Medical Device Daily

HemoSense (San Jose, California), a manufacturer of meters and test strips that monitor blood coagulation, on Tuesday reported that it would drop its plans for new financing via Dutch auction and instead will pursue a traditional initial public offering (IPO).

HemoSense also dropped the IPO price range to $8 to $10 a share, down from $9 to $13. But it boosted the number of shares about 35% to 3.5 million from 2.6 million.

That values the IPO at $40.3 million, when over-allotment purchases are added.

New underwriter Lazard, along with WR Hambrecht and Roth Capital Partners, have an option for an additional 525,000 shares.

HemoSense said in its filing that it plans to use $12 million of the proceeds from the offering for sales and marketing initiatives, $4 million for research and development; $1.5 million for loan repayment, and the rest for working capital and general corporate purposes.

MPM Capital’s controlling stake in the company will drop to 37.1% from 58.6% after the IPO.

HemoSense will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol HEMO.

Mentor (Santa Barbara, California) reported that it has completed a new three-year credit agreement that provides up to $200 million in borrowings, with the potential to increase the total of $250 million. The agreement is led by Bank of the West and Union Bank of California.

Joshua Levine, president and CEO of Mentor, said, “We remain committed to executing our strategy of pursuing licensing and acquisition opportunities that complement our existing businesses and extend our position in the markets we serve.”

Mentor has established $200 million in syndicated credit with the potential to access an additional $50 million through an accordion feature.

Mentor manufactures products for the aesthetics, urologic specialties and clinical and consumer healthcare markets around the world.

In other financing activity:

• Advanced Magnetics (Cambridge, Massachusetts) reported closing a sale of common stock and warrant units to affiliates of Great Point Partners (Greenwich, Connecticut) and one of Advanced Magnetics’ directors. The company estimated net proceeds from the financing at about $13.6 million.

Each unit was comprised of five shares of common stock and a warrant to purchase one share of common stock. The issue price for each unit was $47.50, and the exercise price for each warrant was $13 a share. Advanced Magnetics issued and sold a total of 1,452,625 shares of its common stock and warrants to purchase 290,525 shares of its common stock in the transaction.

The company said proceeds from the transaction would be used to fund clinical development programs including continued development of ferumoxytol as an iron replacement therapeutic and for general working capital purposes.

The securities were issued pursuant to the company’s existing shelf registration statement on Form S-3, which has been declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Advanced Magnetics develops superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles used in therapeutic iron compounds to treat anemia, as well as imaging agents to aid in the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

• Codon Devices (Cambridge, Massachusetts), billing itself as “the first venture-backed startup focused on commercializing applications of synthetic biology,” reported closing its first round of private equity financing. The amount of the funding was not disclosed.

Founding investor Flagship Ventures led the Series A round, with Alloy Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Vinod Khosla co-investing in the round.

The company is developing its proprietary BioFAB production platform for accurately synthesizing kilobase- to megabase-length genetic code, orders of magnitude more rapidly and less expensively than currently available technology.

In the short term, product opportunities include comprehensive sets of biological parts for large-scale research projects, engineered cells that produce novel pharmaceuticals, engineered protein biotherapeutics and novel biosensor devices. In the longer term, the company’s core technology is expected to enable improved vaccines, agricultural products and biorefineries for the production of industrial chemicals and energy.

Samir Kaul, founding CEO and a principal at Flagship Ventures, said, “Our platform enables the engineering of biological systems with unprecedented precision and will lead to a number of breakthrough products serving therapeutic and industrial purposes.”

As a result of the first-round venture financing, Michael Hunkapiller of Alloy Ventures and Joe Lacob of Kleiner Perkins have joined the board.

Codon Devices has internally developed and licensed-in intellectual property related to the synthesis of DNA code as well as numerous designs and processes involving biological systems. These advances relate to several key requirements for the commercial application of biological engineering, including improvements in throughput, performance precision, predictability, ease of design, manufacturability and cost effectiveness. The company’s early commercial focus is on providing engineered devices for molecular biology research, improved cell engineering for the production of high-value chemicals and engineered biotherapeutics.

• Dynacq Healthcare (Houston) reported the closing of a $10 million, five-year revolving credit facility with Merrill Lynch Capital, a division of Merrill Lynch Business Services. Initially, the borrowings from this new credit facility were used to repay in full the total amount of $5.5 million, including accrued interest, outstanding under Dynacq’s previous credit agreement, which was terminated.

Dynacq said that borrowings under the new facility may be used for working capital needs and its borrowing subsidiaries.

Dynacq is a holding company, its subsidiaries providing surgical healthcare services and related ancillary services through hospital facilities and outpatient surgical centers.

• TriPath Imaging (Burlington, North Carolina) reported board approval of the accelerated vesting of stock options that were both unvested and “out-of-the-money” and held by current employees, officers and directors, with exercise prices greater than or equal to $8.89, 25 cents higher than the closing sales price of TriPath’s common stock on the Nasdaq May 27. As a result, options to purchase about 660,000 shares of TriPath common stock have become fully vested, including about 440,000 options held by officers at vice president level and above and about 20,000 options held by non-employee directors. The company said that the vesting acceleration would reduce its aggregate compensation expense in future periods by about $2.7 million.

TriPath manufactures solutions for the clinical management of cancer, including detection, diagnosis, staging and treatment. Its TriPath Oncology subsidiary develops molecular diagnostic products for malignant melanoma and cancers of the cervix, breast, ovary and prostate.

• Bio-Rad Laboratories (Hercules, California), a manufacturer of life science research products and clinical diagnostics, reported completing its offer to exchange up to $200 million aggregate principal amount of its 6.125% senior subordinated notes due 2014 for all of its outstanding 6.125% senior subordinated notes due 2014 issued in a private placement. All of the $200 million of the private notes were tendered and received prior to expiration of the exchange offer at 5 p.m. EDT on May 31.

Bio-Rad serves more than 70,000 research and industry customers through a network of more than 30 subsidiary offices.