DURHAM, NC - Eleven-year-old, venture-backed drug discovery company Scynexis Inc. has raised $5.5 million, or 36 percent, of a targeted $15 million stock and debt offering to investors.

Nine investors have taken part in the offering to date, the first says in a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
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ORLANDO, Fla., December 15, 2011 – Layton Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of drug discovery at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute’s Florida campus, has been awarded a Novo Nordisk Diabetes Innovation Award, valued at $477,500 over two years. The grant will further his research into a novel protein with the potential to improve the understanding of diabetes and further the development of new treatments.
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Morrisville, NC - Morrisville’s Oxygen Biotherapeutics will sell new shares of the company to an institutional investor, raising up to $7.5 million in the process.Oxygen (Nasdaq: OXBT) has dealt with some corporate issues lately. The company terminated Chris Stern as CEO for alleged inaccuracies on his resumé, was warned by Nasdaq because its audit committee was out of compliance, and removed its shares from the Swiss Exchange. But interim CEO Michael B. Jebsen is looking forward, not back.
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ATLANTA, GA - The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) is a non-profit science institute that works closely with NASA’s Human Research Program. NSBRI’s mission is to fund research and technology development to enable safe and productive human space flight (www.nsbri.org).  NSBRI has launched a new program called SMARTCAP that awards $100,000 to small companies (<500 employees) for developing or validating technology or software solutions that can work in the space environment, mitigate a biomedical or job performance challenge for astronauts on long-duration space missions, and make an impact on a target population on Earth.  A complete description of the program may be found at www.smartcap.org.
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 ATLANTA, GA - NorDiag ASA, a Norwegian biotechnology company, has picked metro Atlanta for its North American headquarters. NorDiag estimates that its Alpharetta facility will create 10 to 20 high-paying jobs over the next three years.

“NorDiag’s decision to locate its North American Headquarters in North Fulton speaks volumes about our community’s pro-business environment and strong economic climate,” said Al Nash, Executive Director Progress Partners, an economic development initiative of The Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce. “I would like to thank our Progress Partners investors and our economic development partners at the State and Metro Atlanta Chamber for making this project possible.”

NorDiag was founded in 2003, and is headquartered in Oslo, Norway.
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