Life sciences briefing: Monday, Aug. 6, 2007

(UPDATED at 5:05 p.m. PDT; see below.)
(As part of my ongoing effort to strike the right balance between keeping up with venture-business news and writing more analysis, I’m inaugurating a daily briefing that will collect deal-related news items from the life sciences in one place. I’ll continue updating this post throughout the day as the news dictates. Comments on this or any other feature of this blog are always welcome; sound off below. For more on recent and possible future changes to the Life Sciences site, see earlier posts here and here.)

Featured companies: CoolSystems, BioProcessors, ConforMIS, Semafore Pharmaceuticals, Vatera Capital, Danish Diagnostic Development, BG Medicine

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CoolSystems raises $3M for sports medicine — CoolSystems, a Berkeley, Calif., medical-device maker focused on sports medicine and post-surgical treatments for orthopedic injuries, raised $3 million in an expected $6 million seventh funding round, VentureWire reports (subscription required). The inside round includes MedVenture Associates, Maxwell Trust, Roda Group and angel and individual investors. Completing the $6 million round will bring the company’s total fundraising to $28.9 million.

Founded in 1998, CoolSystems makes and sells compression and cooling wraps under the GameReady brand. From the VentureWire story:

The company’s device treatments include a technology that provides a simultaneous compression and cold therapy, as well as wraps, for the treatment of post-orthopedic surgery and sports medicine. The technology works when a cloth is wrapped around the treatment area and is squeezed on the outside like a blood pressure cuff with a cyclical compression to reduce swelling, while high speed cooling is applied on the inside. The company also worked on the wraps with doctors and dress designers to get the best fit. CoolSystem’s equine division sells products for competitive and post-operative horses.

Implant maker ConforMIS secures $10M debt facility — Lexington, Mass.-based ConforMIS, a maker of knee implants for arthritis patients, secured a $10 million “debt facility” with Merrill Lynch Capital. The funding will help accelerate commercialization of the company’s patient-specific knee implants while serving as a bridge to a mezzanine round.

Microbioreactor maker BioProcessors raises $10M — BioProcessors, a Woburn, Mass., developer of drug-development laboratory equipment, raised an additional $10 million in a third funding round, bringing its total for the round to $28 million, VentureWire reports.

Investors included LSP Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, New Science Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners and Healthcare Ventures. According to PE Hub, the company has a post-money valuation of approximately $68 million. BioProcessors, founded in 2000, makes miniature “bioreactors” for culturing cells or conducting automated cell-based experiments.

Semafore Pharma names new CEO — Semafore Pharmaceuticals, an Indianapolis biotech focused on cancer drugs, named Edward Jacobs as its new CEO. Jacobs was previously the chief operating officer at SuperGen.

Kos Pharma founder starts new VC fund — Michael Jaharis, a co-founder of Kos Pharmaceuticals, which Abbott Labs snapped up for $4.2 billion last December, has launched his own VC fund, Vatera Capital, VentureWire reports. The fund has already participated in one funding, a $53 million round for Aveo Pharmaceuticals (see our coverage here). Given Jaharis’ background running drug-reformulation companies — that is, ones focused on figuring out how to package old drugs in new ways — it seems likely that his investments will follow suit. (Aveo, which licensed its cancer drugs from Mitsubishi Pharma, is a pretty good example, in fact.) This strategy can certainly make money — Kos itself is a prime example of that — but it probably isn’t going to knock anyone’s socks off.

Israel’s manufacturing-quality inspector Orbotech pays $39M to acquire Danish Diagnostic Development — Orbotech, an Israel-based maker of electronic-component inspection systems, agreed to buy Danish Diagnostic Development for $39 million in cash, plus up to another $6.5 million in milestone payments. (See the release here.)

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DDD is a leading maker of “gamma cameras” used in CT and MRI scans as well as in “nuclear medicine,” which involves injecting a radioactive solution into a patient, then observing their movements with the gamma camera. Orbotech said the acquisition heralds its diversification into medical imaging.

BG Medicine files for European IPO — Waltham, Mass.-based BG Medicine notified the SEC that it intends to go public on the Euronext Amsterdam market. BG Medicine is focused on developing new “molecular diagnostics” that aimed at detecting disease or other bodily harm at the earliest possible moment. The company’s lead candidates include tests for early signs of heart failure or clogged arteries and another test to determine if patients are likely to respond to new cancer drugs such as Herceptin and Avastin.

UPDATE (5:05pm PT): Added items on Semafore Pharmaceuticals, Vatera Capital, Danish Diagnostic Development and BG Medicine.