San Diego-based Elcelyx Therapeutics said today it has secured $40 million in a Series E financing—its biggest ever—after receiving official guidance from the FDA for late-stage trials of its oral drug candidate, a delayed-release formulation of metformin.

Elcelyx is targeting the 40 percent of patients with type 2 diabetes who can’t tolerate existing formulations of metformin, a first-line drug of choice for most of them.

In an interview with Xconomy earlier this year, Elcelyx CEO Alain Baron laid out three options for funding late-stage clinical trials: raise capital through an IPO; sell Elcelyx to a big pharma; or raise enough funding for Elcelyx to carry out the late-stage trials itself. With today’s announcement, it appears the company is pursuing a low-budget version of option No. 3.

At that time, Baron estimated it would cost $100 million to complete three late-stage studies that would involve a total of 1,500 to 2,000 patients.

In a statement today, Elcelyx said the $40 million it raised from two new investors, Hong Kong’s Sailing Capital and certain funds managed by Boston’s Clough Capital Partners, along with all existing investors, would support the first of those three late-stage studies. Elcelyx, founded in 2010, previously secured about $57 million from Morganthaler Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Technology Partners, and GSM Fund.

Between 7 million and 8 million Americans with type 2 diabetes can’t take standard metformin, either because of adverse side effects that include severe nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, or because the patients’ impaired kidney function leads to a condition known as metformin-associated lactic acidosis. The delayed-release formulation developed by Elceylx targets the lower bowel, which limits the absorption of metformin into the blood. The company said it provides the benefits of metformin without the systemic exposure-related health risks posed to patients with kidney impairment.

Elcelyx said it already has begun the first study, a phase 2b dose-ranging study designed to document Metformin DR’s potential for use by patients with impaired kidney function or gastrointestinal difficulties. The company plans to enroll about 550 patients in the study.

According to Elcelyx, the trial would likely be followed by two pivotal late-stage studies, one of which would include type 2 diabetes patients with moderate renal impairment. Elcelyx did not indicate how those studies would be funded, however.

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Llamasoft, the Ann Arbor, MI-based supply-chain software company, announced Tuesday that it has closed a Series B round valued at $50 million. Goldman Sachs is the round’s sole investor, and it will take a seat on Llamasoft’s board as part of the deal.

Toby Brzoznowski, co-founder and executive vice president of Llamasoft, says the company has grown at a breakneck pace.

“For the past four or five years, we’ve averaged 60 percent growth annually,” he says, adding that for the past three years, Llamasoft has also landed on Deloitte’s Fast 500 list, which tracks high-growth tech companies. “In the supply chain space, we’re the only company on the list.”

Brzoznowski says Llamasoft plans to use the new investment to further innovate its existing software. Though he declined to go into detail, he says the new products will address the changing needs of larger customers. Llamasoft’s roster of clients includes massive corporations like Kellogg’s, Ford, and Wal-Mart.

“As we get more of a blue chip customer base, we recognize that they need additional supply chain solutions, and we think we’re uniquely positioned to create them,” Brzoznowski says. “But we need resources and talent to go at the pace they’re looking for.”

Llamasoft plans to add staff at its offices in Michigan, the United Kingdom, and China, and expand into Japan and continental Europe. The company currently has about 300 employees.

“We hired 70 people last year, and that pace will continue,” Brzoznowski says. “We’re actively hiring developer talent to build out the technology we’ve already prototyped.” He says the company expects to eventually acquire smaller software development firms, particularly overseas.

Llamasoft also plans to develop products for “tangential markets” connected to the supply chain sector, he says, particularly in the realms of inventory planning and supply chain intelligence.

“That’s what we want to go after hard,” he adds. “Some of the analytics we’ve built up allow us to come to market with robust, flexible solutions. We’ve got some differentiating technology.”

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Seattle space business Spaceflight, which sends its customers’ small satellites into orbit by renting excess capacity on other companies’ launch vehicles, bought a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX to conduct its own dedicated “rideshare” mission in 2017.

By controlling the entire mission, Spaceflight can cater to higher-value customers who weren’t willing to trade the cost savings of being the secondary cargo on a mission for the lack of a firm launch schedule.

“We needed to provide that control for our customers, and the customers that want that are willing to pay a premium for it,” said Curt Blake, president of Spaceflight Services, the Spaceflight division that handles launches and deployments of small satellites.

The company started by deploying customers’ so-called CubeSats—miniature, standardized satellites sent into low Earth orbit (LEO) for research, training, and other purposes. “We still manifest and deploy CubeSats, but we’ve moved to larger payloads, up to the 500 kilogram-area,” he said. These larger satellites are expensive and companies don’t want to risk their investment in development and launch if there’s a chance it will be delivered into space late, Blake said. It costs $17.5 million to launch a 450-kilogram satellite into LEO, according to Spaceflight’s published commercial pricing.

Blake said the company would also continue buying secondary payload space on other companies’ rockets for customers that can handle a flexible launch schedule (launches are determined by the timelines of the primary payload, among other factors). Spaceflight buys excess capacity from an international group of launch vehicle suppliers including U.S.-based Orbital Sciences, the Indian Space Research Organization, and Russian venture ISC Kosmotras.

[Editor’s note: Spaceflight CEO Jason Andrews will talk about Seattle’s future as a hub for commercial space exploration and entrepreneurship at Seattle 2035, Xconomy’s upcoming conference on the future of innovation. Learn more and register here.]

Spaceflight has sent up 77 satellites since 2013 and says it has more than 135 scheduled for deployment through 2018. Its customers include foreign and U.S. government agencies, research organizations, and commercial enterprises.

The Falcon 9 rocket planned for the forthcoming 2017 Sun Synch Express mission is built by SpaceX, the commercial space venture founded by Elon Musk in 2002, based in Hawthorne, CA, and with a new satellite communications office ramping up in Redmond, WA.

SpaceX describes the Falcon 9 as “the first rocket completely developed in the 21st century.” It is meant for ferrying satellites and other cargo into orbit, and for bringing astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the Dragon spacecraft. It is designed to be reusable, and SpaceX is testing that capability now, but the Falcon 9 Spaceflight purchased will be a one-time use launch vehicle.

Blake.

“When that’s ready, we definitely plan to start using them,” Blake said, adding that Spaceflight plans to make the Sun Synch mission an annual event.

SpaceX and Spaceflight will work together to run the 2017 mission, with SpaceX handling launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast. When the mission reaches space, Spaceflight will take over to deploy its Sherpa payload adapter, which holds the individual satellites and puts them in proper orbit, Blake said. The target orbit is aligned with the sun, enabling earth-imaging satellites to take pictures during the day.

The Falcon 9 payload will be on the order of 6 metric tons, Blake said. The company has already booked about 80 percent of that capacity and is in negotiations to fill the remaining space. “It’s a little bit of a game of Tetris,” he said. “All the different payloads have different masses and different volumes, and we have to make sure they fit.”

SpaceX prices a Falcon 9 for a 2016 launch at $61.2 million on its Web site. Blake would not comment on the specific terms of its deal with SpaceX, but confirmed that it’s “in the ballpark” of the published price.

Spaceflight announced a $20 million investment from RRE Venture Capital, Vulcan Capital, and Razor’s Edge Ventures in March. While the funding gives the company a cushion and means for expansion into other business lines—such as its own earth-imaging business, BlackSky Global—the launch services business model is “mainly self-sufficient,” Blake said.

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