ValenTx gins $22M Series B; Academics earn up to $110K from industry;

> Carpinteria, CA-based ValenTx says it's closed on a $22 million Series B to back the development of a less-invasive device to control obesity. The round was led by SV Life Sciences and joined by Covidien Ventures, as well as all the Company`s existing venture capital investors: Sapient Capital, EDF Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Affinity Capital Partners, and TGap Ventures. ValenTx release

> Protalix has won orphan drug status for its Gaucher's drug. Story

> Australia's Bionomics has raised $15 million for the clinical development of two experimental therapies. Article

> Debiopharm has won an exclusive worldwide license to develop and commercialize Ipsen's CDC25 phosphatase enzyme (now Debio 0931), for the treatment of various human cancers. Release

> Salix won marketing approval for Metozolv ODT, a therapy indicated for the relief of symptoms in adults associated with acute and recurrent diabetic gastroparesis and for the treatment of short-term therapy (4-12 weeks) for adults with symptomatic documented gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) who fail to respond to conventional therapy. Salix release

Pharma News

> Anti-AIDS activists are calling on GlaxoSmithKline to contribute its HIV-related intellectual property to a patent pool. Article

> In the wake of last week's $2.3 billion settlement between Pfizer and the U.S. government, experts are looking at that enormous price tag--and finding not much of a deterrent, the Associated Press reports. Article

> A slew of new H1N1 flu treatment news hit over the long weekend, so we're offering a roundup to help you get back up to speed. Article

Biotech IT News

> Virginia Tech has begun a scale-up of its GenoCAD synthetic biology software, used in designing genetic constructs. The effort stems from a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation, thanks to stimulus package funding. Article

> Personal PCR--polymerase chain reaction technology in a machine that costs a fraction of the tens of thousands of dollars of current technology--may be right around the corner. Article

> Ten screening libraries from ChemBridge are now available to researchers via the Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD) public access database. Article

And Finally... Researchers at U.S. universities garner an average of a little more than $33,000 a year from the drug and device industry, with some earning up to $110,869, according to a new survey of 1,663 researchers. And those lucrative and very common ties are raising the importance of revealing the financial links that bind academic researchers to industry. Article