The dealmaking column is a survey of recent transactions, including strategic alliances, mergers & acquisitions, and financings, in the life sciences industries. Deals are listed by the following industry sectors: in vitro diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and research/analytical instrumentation and reagents. All transactions are excerpted from Windhover's Strategic Transactions database, providing comprehensive transaction coverage from 1991 to the present.

A preview of the emerging health care companies profiled in the current issue of Start-Up. This month's profile group, The Asthma Challenge: Not Solved Yet, features profiles of airPharma, Aperon Biosystems, Inverseon and Topigen Pharmaceuticals. Plus these Start-Ups across Health Care: Ensemble Discovery, Miikana Therapeutics, MiTiHeart and Resonant Medical.

Asthma represents one of the blockbuster markets in the pharmaceutical industry; sales of drugs from 10 companies amount to $14 billion each year. Yet despite the high-volume sales of asthma drugs, in 73% of patients the disease is poorly controlled. For pharmaceutical firms and start-ups, the complex, multifactorial disease offers tantalizing possibilities; it's an enormous, yet underserved market with many points of entry, mechanistically speaking.

When it came time to build a pipeline, airPharma's founders turned to a product they knew well for their lead compound:a drug formerly marketed as Pumactant, for neonatal respiratory distress. This compound is an inhalable synthetic pulmonary surfactant. The symptoms of asthma have been associated with surfactant dysfunction.