{"id":331745,"date":"2010-02-17T15:22:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T20:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=63818"},"modified":"2010-02-17T15:22:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T20:22:23","slug":"san-diego%e2%80%99s-tioga-pharmaceuticals-raises-18-million-to-develop-ibs-drug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/331745","title":{"rendered":"San Diego\u2019s Tioga Pharmaceuticals Raises $18 Million to Develop IBS Drug"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Life Sciences<\/a>, deals<\/a>, Biotech<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"Tioga<\/a>
\n\t\tDenise Gellene wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tioga Pharmaceuticals<\/a>, a virtual company based in San Diego with just two fulltime employees, is announcing today it has raised $18 million in private equity to fund a late-stage clinical trial of asimadoline, its experimental drug for irritable bowel disorder.<\/p>\n

A new investor, Genesys Capital Partners of Toronto, joined current stakeholders Forward Ventures, New Leaf Venture Partners, and BB Biotech Ventures in the financing.<\/p>\n

Tioga says in a press release <\/a>that the clinical trial of 600 subjects is scheduled to begin in the U.S. next month. The study is one of two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials required for FDA approval, the company says. The trial is specifically for patients with the form of irritable bowel syndrome that causes diarrhea (D-IBS).<\/p>\n

As I reported in last fall<\/a>, Tioga acquired asimadoline from Germany-based Merck, which put the drug through early-stage trials before deciding it did not fit into Merck’s long-range plans. In return for equity in Tioga, Merck granted the startup rights to asimadoline and agreed to provide project management expertise. Taking Merck’s R&D costs into account, more than $100 million has been invested in the drug.<\/p>\n

As a virtual company, Tioga outsources all aspects of clinical development—human trials, chemistry, and manufacturing, regulatory, legal and IP management—in a business model that reduces its financial risk by keeping overhead to a minimum as development progresses from one phase to the next. Team members are on contract and are scattered all over the country.<\/p>\n

Tioga describes asimadoline as an oral drug that targets kappa opioid receptors <\/a>found in the digestive tract. In a mid-stage trial of 596 men and women with D-IBS accompanied by at least moderate pain, asimadoline reduced pain, urgency, frequency and bloating, the company says.<\/p>\n

Tioga Chairman and CEO Stuart Collinson, who is also a partner at San Diego’s Forward Ventures, told me last fall that the drug was a good bet because the potential market was fairly large and the only approved drug for the condition, alosetron hydrochloride (Lotronex), carries a black-box warning, the strongest possible, and may only be prescribed by physicians enrolled in a prescribing program that requires them to inform patients about the drug’s risks.<\/p>\n

Tioga is now a step closer to learning whether its bet will pay off.<\/p>\n

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Life Sciences, deals, Biotech Denise Gellene wrote: Tioga Pharmaceuticals, a virtual company based in San Diego with just two fulltime employees, is announcing today it has raised $18 million in private equity to fund a late-stage clinical trial of asimadoline, its experimental drug for irritable bowel disorder. A new investor, Genesys Capital Partners of Toronto, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2918,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2918"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}