BOSTON, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Arisaph Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately held drug discovery biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it completed the second closing of a $16 million financing round, raising an additional $8 million. The additional $8 million represents the second tranche of a private equity investment from Kos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and 2004 Oikos Investment Partners, LP, a limited partnership owned primarily by Mary Jaharis, the spouse of Michael Jaharis. Each of Kos and Oikos invested $4 million as part of the second closing. To trigger the second closing, Arisaph successfully achieved its key development milestones, principally related to the Company’s potent DPP IV inhibitor (ARI 2243) and its ultra-smart cancer program. Arisaph intends to use the proceeds from the second closing to advance ARI 2243 into human clinical testing and to select lead candidates of its ultra smart pro-drugs for cancer.
“We are pleased to have achieved our development milestones and to have the continued support of our majority shareholder and our strategic partner,” commented Christopher P. Kiritsy, President and Chief Executive Officer of Arisaph Pharmaceuticals. “The funds from the second closing combined with previously established strategic license arrangements provide us with adequate capital to progress our promising lead products into initial human testing. Our business is evolving quite nicely and we look forward to leveraging our drug discovery capabilities to form additional strategic partnerships and to develop additional differentiated compounds, particularly in the area of cancer.”
In addition to the private equity investment from Kos Pharmaceuticals, Arisaph had formed a strategic drug discovery partnership with Kos in which Arisaph designs and synthesizes new chemical entities for three specific targets to treat cardiovascular disorders. Through such sponsored research arrangement Arisaph has designed and synthesized ARI 1778, an apo A-1 mimetic peptide for treatment of atherosclerosis and ARI 2035, a novel niacin mimetic for raising HDL (“good”) cholesterol. Under the terms of the sponsored research agreement, Arisaph receives funding from Kos to support the research and will receive royalties on sales from products discovered by Arisaph.
About Arisaph
Arisaph, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is an emerging drug design and discovery biopharmaceutical company with active programs to develop differentiated therapies for diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Arisaph utilizes proprietary drug discovery platforms to develop ultra smart drugs that are efficacious and act on select targets. Arisaph has successfully applied its specificity profiling and retro-inversal chiral chemistry technology platforms to synthesize promising candidate drugs for seven different targets, including ARI 2243, a lead candidate for DPP IV inhibition to treat type II diabetes and ARI 1778 or reverse D-4F, an orally active apo A-I mimetic peptide, being developed in collaboration with Kos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to treat atherosclerosis. Through a licensing agreement with Tufts University, the Company has exclusive worldwide rights to several important issued patents in the diabetes area and several pending patents that have utility for the treatment of cancer and cardiovascular disease.
About Kos
Kos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a highly successful fully integrated specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in developing, commercializing, manufacturing and marketing proprietary prescription products for the treatment of chronic diseases with a particular focus on the cardiovascular, metabolic and respiratory disease areas. The principal product development strategy of the Company is to reformulate existing pharmaceutical products with large market potential to improve safety, efficacy, and patient compliance. The Kos strategy also includes making increased, measured investments in new chemical entity research through in- house and sponsored research, scientific in-licensing and general corporate development activities. The Company currently markets Niaspan(R), Advicor(R), Azmacort(R), Cardizem(R)LA, Teveten(R), and Teveten(R)HCT. Kos has a strong and growing research and development pipeline encapsulating proprietary drug delivery technologies in solid-dose, inhalation and aerosol metered-dose device administration to help fuel sustained, organic sales growth into the future.
Certain statements in this press release, including statements regarding the Company’s research and development effort, the Company’s ability to finance its development programs into initial human clinical testing, and the Company’s ability to successfully capitalize on the early stage research are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include risks and uncertainties related to: our ability to discover and develop new compounds and products using a novel approach to drug discovery; the early stage of all of our discovery and development efforts; our ability successfully to complete preclinical and clinical development of our products; our ability to obtain and maintain regulatory approvals for our products; competition from other technologies and technologies similar to ours; obtaining, maintaining and protecting intellectual property utilized by our products; changes in legislation and regulations affecting our products and potential product candidates; our need to obtain additional funding to support our business activities; our dependence on collaborators and other third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales and distribution of products; the ability of our licensees to achieve developmental, regulatory and other milestones and to commercialize their products; the effect of conditions in the pharmaceutical industry and the economy in general, as well as certain other risks and uncertainties.
Arisaph Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
CONTACT: Christopher Kiritsy, President and CEO of ArisaphPharmaceuticals, +1-617-292-3322
Web site: http://www.arisaph.com/
