Neuromed gets funds to develop painkiller
The Conshohocken company said it had raised $53.3 million from private investors.
Neuromed Pharmaceuticals Ltd., a Conshohocken company developing pain medicines, announced yesterday that it had raised $53.3 million in private financing to develop an opioid painkiller.
The spin-off biotechnology company from the University of British Columbia, with research operations in Vancouver, Canada, is collaborating with Merck & Co. Inc. on compounds that block N-type calcium channels and are aimed at preventing the transmission of neuropathic and inflammatory pain signals.
In April, Neuromed paid an initial $30 million to license U.S. marketing rights to an extended-release formulation of the potent opioid pain drug hydromorphone from Alza Corp., a Johnson & Johnson company.
Hydromorphone has been widely used for years under the brand name Dilaudid, but current U.S. formulations are immediate-release and require dosing several times a day.
The drug - five to 10 times more potent than morphine - is sold as Jurnista in Germany and some Scandinavian countries, and it has conditional approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Neuromed has said it expects one successful Phase 3 clinical trial will be needed to win U.S. approval for a once-daily version of hydromorphone.
"This round was intended primarily to finance the clinical trials and registration" of hydromorphone, or NMED-1077, and other promising pain treatments, said Christopher Gallen, Neuromed's president and chief executive officer.
Separately, privately held Neuromed also is developing T-type calcium-channel drugs to treat chronic pain, anxiety, epilepsy and cardiovascular disease.
The company has 10 employees - including its six-member executive team - in Conshohocken, and about 70 research employees in Canada.
The latest financing includes two new investors, who did not want to be named, and existing investors including MPM Capital L.P., James Richardson & Sons Ltd., Neuro Discovery L.P., GrowthWorks Capital Ltd., BDC Venture Capital, the Canadian Medical Discoveries Fund, and the Royal Bank of Canada. Founded in 1998, Neuromed has raised a total of $126 million in private financing.
Neuromed and Merck announced a setback Aug. 8, when they ended development of a drug candidate, NMED-160, also known as Merck's MK-6721, a calcium-channel blocker in mid-stage Phase 2 clinical trials for chronic pain.
The companies are continuing to collaborate on other pain-drug candidates. "This collaborative is quite intense and active," Gallen said. "What matters is that, in the end, you come up with a best-in-class molecule. That's what the goal is here."