Life sciences companies looking for cash are often told to go where the money is. REVA Medical did just and went to Australia. The San Diego medical device company raised $84.8 million and began trading on the Australian Stock Exchange under the symbol RVA. REVA filed a prospectus both with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

REVA makes bioresorbable stent products that combine its stent design with a proprietary polymer that is metabolized and cleared from the body. The company is in the process of finalizing the design of its stent and intends to initiate a pilot human clinical trial in the second quarter of 2011.

Clearly REVA did well considering it is a development stage company with no revenues and has yet to initiate a human trial for its lead product. But the market opportunity for coronary stents is $5.5 billion and the company has the support of two leaders in the space. REVA’s investors include Boston Scientific and Medtronic. Its prospectus noted that Medtronic had committed to invest $10 million in the IPO. REVA also had two separate agreements with Boston Scientific: a merger agreement under which the medical devices powerhouse can acquire REVA if there is no IPO by the end of January 2011, or if an IPO fails to raise at least $50 million; and a separate option to acquire exclusive rights to sell and distribute REVA products for at least five years.

Clearly the interest of two major medical device companies gave heft to the deal. While REVA’s offering was successful, Ventrus Biosciences managed to go public at the bottom of its range to raise $17.4 million. Shares of the specialty GI company managed to trade up on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol VTUS. The company has three products in late-stage development. Half of the money raised will go to late stage testing of its lead candidate topical inferanserin to treat hemorrhoids.

Meanwhile, diagnostics company BG Medicine put its IPO on hold after failing to complete its offering due to weak response. Across the Atlantic, the proposed offering by Swedish biotech Moberg Derma was so tepid that it pulled its IPO due to insufficient shareholder demand.

So far, twenty U.S. life science companies have managed to go public in 2010, after a nearly two year drought. Most of them had to reduce their offering price to close the deal and most are trading below their initial values. With one week left in the year, it is unlikely that any more deals will get done. While many have bemoaned investors’ lack of enthusiasm for risky ventures, the fact that these companies went public and now have access to the capital markets bodes well for the long queue of others waiting in the wings.

In 2010, China overtook the U.S. as the world’s leader in IPOs with record numbers of Chinese companies listing in Hong Kong and the United States, according to a review of the overall global IPO market by Renaissance Capital (http://www.renaissancecapital.com/ipohome/Review/2010review.pdf). Its outlook for 2011: “Chinese volume may moderate, while U.S. small cap tech, consumer and healthcare accelerate.”