$54 Million to Spend

Oxford Bioscience Partners of Costa Mesa, which also has an office in Stamford, Conn., has also just received some fresh money.

The venture capital concern, which specializes in the health care industry--including biotechnology, biomedical and health services--has just raised nearly $54 million to invest in cash-needy businesses in Orange County and throughout the nation.

“We are looking at a number of companies right now,” said fund partner Edmund M. Olivier.

Some likely candidates include a start-up firm that is developing a new three-dimensional imaging machine, a company that is working on a range of therapeutic drugs and an environmental cleanup company.

Since its founding in 1992, Oxford Biosciences has invested in six concerns:

* Avid Therapeutics of Philadelphia, which is developing drugs to fight a variety of viruses;

* Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, near San Francisco, which is studying the aging process;

* Human Genome Sciences of Rockville, Md., which is researching genes and genetic fragments;

* OsteoArthritis Sciences of Cambridge, Mass., which is developing arthritis therapies;

* Prizm Pharmaceuticals Inc. of San Diego, which is focusing on the study of growth, and

* Vivus Inc. of Menlo Park, which is developing a drug therapy program for male impotence.