Inpharmatica raises $25 million financing
completion of third round financing in which £13.8 million (€25
million) was raised.
The proceeds of the funding will be used to further develop its in house and collaborative drug discovery business, particularly concentrating on its PharmaCarta platform for further licensing activities.
PharmaCarta is a gene to drug platform with three core components; gene/protein identification through Biopendium; target selection and lead identification through Chematica, and lead optimisation through Admensa.
The company's lead internal discovery programme, derived through its application of PharmaCarta, involves a group of sixteen novel nuclear receptors. Nuclear receptors are an important class of proteins, being the most druggable of all major protein families by precedence, and having an important role in a number of major diseases.
Just last month, Inpharmatica expanded its long-standing drug discovery collaboration with biotechnology company Serono. The companies are developing novel secreted proteins Over 200 novel protein sequences have already been identified and the current expanded agreement, which was signed in 2001.
Commenting on the fundraising, Edwin Moses, chairman of Inpharmatica, said: "The money raised will further assist in the development and marketing of Inpharmatica's platform technologies and importantly accelerate our progress within internal discovery."
Focusing on druggable targets, the PharmaCarta, is a suite of informatics-based technologies fully capable of rapid gene to candidate operations. Inpharmatica's lead discovery programme is focused on generating pre-clinical candidates against 16 novel nuclear receptors - proteins widely considered to be both druggable and of high therapeutic interest.
Other significant programmes include novel secreted proteins/antibody targets, ion channels, P450 enzymes, metalloproteinases and progestin receptors.
