Collaboration with Washington University to co-develop therapies targeting apoliprotein A makes up part of Denali's big August push in Alzheimer's. Kleo gets global rights to two Yale antibody programs and raises Series A cash.

Derived from Strategic Transactions, a premium source for tracking life sciences deal activity, the Venture Funding Deals column provides a comprehensive monthly review of emerging life science companies that have received venture funding, including companies within the In Vitro Diagnostics, Medical Devices, and Pharmaceuticals sectors. This month’s column covers deals announced November through December 2014.

With Alzheimer’s researchers now looking to head off the disease in its earlier stages, the hunt is on for ways to detect its presence when patients aren’t necessarily showing symptoms. Neurotrack Technologies Inc. is building a noninvasive eye-tracking test that it believes could replace the ADAS-COG battery of neurological tests that are the current front line of diagnosis of the disease.

The current technologies for diagnosing spinal disease don’t consistently deliver what’s required of any medical diagnostic: good predictive value, high specificity, sensitivity, validity, reproducibility, and safety. This is a gap that several young, innovative companies have set out to fill.