Callidus Biopharma, a US development-stage biotechnology company focused on creating breakthrough biologic drugs for a range of orphan diseases, has closed on $4.6m series A financing of preferred equity led by two strategic unnamed investors.
The fundraising marks the company’s first round of external investment, according to Hung Do, chief scientific officer and co-founder of Callidus.
However, the company seems to have been fundraising for this round for some time. Last year MedCityNews.com reported that it had raised $1.6m in equity from two angel investors by January 2012, which was part of a then $3m series A round.
Walter Greenblatt & Associates (member FINRA, SIPC), a life-science focused investment bank, served as the financial adviser to Callidus Biopharma in both transactions.
The company intends to use the proceeds to accelerate pre-clinical development of its drug discovery pipeline of therapies for lysosomal storage diseases (LSDs), including candidates in Pompe and Gaucher diseases as well as other IGF-2 related LSDs with no FDA-approved therapy currently available.
The company said that it will also use the capital to commercialise its related proprietary protein expression technology to increase dramatically the yields of secreted protein production processes crucial to biologics manufacture.
“Having recently demonstrated in vivo proof of concept for our Pompe candidate, which is expected to be at least 5 times more effective than current therapies due to better targeted delivery, we will now be working toward initiating clinical studies during 2014,” said Dr Hung.
Barry Byrne, director of the University of Florida Powell Center for Rare Disease Research and a leading authority on Pompe disease and related diseases, said: “Callidus’ approach opens up a new avenue for improving drug targeting of enzyme replacement treatments [ERT] for Lysosomal Storage Disorders. Poor targeting has been a major hurdle for efficient delivery of ERTs. This breakthrough technology has the potential to improve the efficacy, safety and dosing regimens for ERTs for these devastating diseases.”