Silatronix of Madison has raised $4 million to help support the technology company’s work to develop a better electrolyte for batteries. A combination of strategic investors from Japan and company insiders are participating in the latest round, said CEO Mark Zager. As of this week, Silatronix has raised $4 million out of a total of $7 million it’s seeking. The financing was disclosed in a pair of filings with securities regulators. The energy storage company’s focus is on making lithium-ion batteries more powerful and safer. The end result could be mobile phones and tablets that stay charged longer, or electric cars that can travel much greater distances before they need to be plugged in to recharge.

Read more at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Silatronix, a University of Wisconsin-Madison startup that has invented a safer electrolyte for the lithium-ion batteries used in phones, laptops and tablets, says its formulation has survived several years of evaluation and is now moving into pilot production at a major Japanese battery manufacturer.

The company cannot be identified, but it is known around the world, says Silatronix co-founder Robert Hamers, a professor of chemistry at UW-Madison.

A lithium electrolyte is the heart of the market’s lightest, most powerful batteries. But lithium batteries occasionally rupture and burn or explode.

The idea for the original Silatronix invention, a safer electrolyte, was hatched in one of those chance meetings beloved among advocates of scientific innovation. Hamers says Robert West, a chemistry colleague, “was literally walking down the hall, and he asked me, ‘Do you have anybody who can do electrochemical measurements?’ I told him we measure the current-voltage relationships at solid-liquid interfaces all the time, and he started talking about a new electrolyte for a lithium ion battery he was developing.”

Read more at NewsWise.

In line with its commitment to help address the world’s most pressing health care issues, and improve and save more lives, Ethicon, a medical device company of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies, today announced the completion of its acquisition of NeuWave Medical, Inc., a privately held medical device company that manufactures and markets minimally invasive soft-tissue microwave ablation systems. This acquisition is consistent with the Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices’ strategy of advancing innovation and investing in areas of unmet medical needs such as surgical oncology.

“Currently, there are limited treatment options for soft-tissue, non-resectable lesions,” said Michael del Prado, Company Group Chairman of Ethicon. “Together with NeuWave Medical, Ethicon can bring minimally invasive treatment options to make a difference for patients around the world. This is especially important for patients who may not be medically eligible for traditional surgery. We can now offer physicians and patients more choice in treatment options for soft-tissue lesions.”

NeuWave Medical’s products are currently used by physicians in over half of the top cancer centers in the United States. NeuWave Medical’s Certus^® 140 ablation system’s high-powered computer and intuitive touchscreen interface enables activation of single or simultaneous multiple probe procedures for patients with soft-tissue lesions. This allows physicians to effectively tailor ablations for lesions of varying shapes and sizes. NeuWave Medical’s probe family includes conventional probes and the only Precision™ PR probe to limit the ablation length, allowing precise and controlled ablations.

Phoenix Nuclear Labs (PNL) and SHINE Medical Technologies (SHINE) announced today that they successfully operated their accelerator-based neutron generator for 132 consecutive hours with greater than 97% uptime. This accomplishment represents an industry first for extended-operation reliability of a gas target neutron generator and is an important demonstration of the robustness of the PNL neutron generator, a key enabling technology for the SHINE medical isotope production facility.

“This accomplishment is the result of over ten years of development effort by our dedicated and talented technical team,” said Ross Radel, President of Phoenix Nuclear Labs. “We’ve demonstrated record neutron yield, and this achievement validates that our technology can run with unprecedented reliability on the time scales necessary for highly efficient and stable isotope production by our partner SHINE.”

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NeuWave Medical, a Madison medical device company, is being bought by Ethicon, part of the Johnson & Johnson conglomerate.

Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. No jobs in Madison are expected to be lost.

“We are really excited to be acquired by a great company like Johnson & Johnson,” NeuWave CEO Dan Sullivan said. “It will help us expand our new product development and our global presence.”

Swallow Solutions LLC said its device for treating swallowing disorders caused a 61% decrease in hospital admissions and average cost savings of $21,000 per patient in a recent study at the VA Hospital in Madison.

“For us, this study is extremely important,” said Eric Horler, president and chief exectutive officer. “It’s the only study we know of that actually ties a therapeuetic intervention to a reduction in hospitalization and associated costs.”

Read more at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Swallow Solutions, Madison, raised $441,000 from previous investors and hopes to boost that to $750,000 by the end of March, said Eric Horler, president and CEO.

The company is working on medical devices and beverages to help people with swallowing disorders. The new money will fund research and development of new products for followup treatment, Horler said.

Swallow Solutions’ main product, SwallowSTRONG, consists of a mouthpiece that measures tongue pressure, guides the patient through customized therapy and sends reports to the physician.

“We’ve had good growth from that,” Horler said.

Read more at Wisconsin State Journal.

Phoenix Nuclear Labs LLC, a Madison maker of particle acceleration and neutron generation systems, has raised $790,000 of a planned $1.5 million of debt financing, according to a filing with federal securities regulators.

Phoenix raised the money from seven investors, the filing said. This brings to nearly $4 million the amount of outside funding the company has raised, according to www.formds.com.

Phoenix has about 35 employees, and its customers include companies in the neutron radiography and materials processing industries, said Scott Christensen, director of sales. It also has contracts with the U.S. government in areas like the study of explosive detection, he said.

Read more at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Biotech startup Invenra has raised $2 million in new equity financing. The cash will be used as “operating capital” as the cell-free antibody maker continues to add employees and line up sales prospects, vice president of business development Mark Kubik said Wednesday.

The money will allow the company to broaden its partnership with U.K.-based Oxford BioTherapeutics, which was announced in June. Oxford, which develops antibody drug conjugates to identify cancer targets, is “interested in further access” to Invenra’s technology, Kubik said.

That technology involves a sequence of binding and function, Kubik said. That means not only getting antibodies to stick to epitopes on the target, but also doing something to the target upon which antibodies are expressed.

Kubik said Invenra has hired three antibody discovery scientists since signing the Oxford partnership, bringing the current employee count to around 15. He said he anticipates more growth.

Read more at Xconomy.

FluGen Inc., a biotechnology company developing a novel “universal” influenza vaccine, has completed a $12 million Series A financing. Venture Investors LLC, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, and other new investors participated in this first institutional financing of the company, along with many of FluGen’s existing investors led by Knox LLC.

Funds raised will support the continued development of FluGen’s lead universal influenza vaccine candidate, REDEE FLU ™, including completion of an initial human clinical trial and the preparation of a quadrivalent vaccine candidate. REDEE FLU is a single replication live influenza virus vaccine that can infect cells, express influenza RNA and proteins, but does not produce any new virus. REDEE FLU is safe, induces potent immune responses and protects against mismatched influenza strains in multiple preclinical animal models. Current influenza vaccines fall short in their ability to protect against influenza in the elderly and the ability to protect against influenza caused by strains that have mutated, or “drifted,” from those contained in the yearly vaccine. Last year’s influenza outbreak in the U. S. was caused by such a “drifted” strain, leading to low vaccine efficacy, record numbers of hospitalizations, particularly of the elderly, and epidemic numbers of deaths.

Read more at Business Wire.