Rivus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced the completion of a $35 million Series A financing
Advancing a pipeline of first-in-class Controlled Metabolic Accelerators (CMAs) to harness the body’s natural processes to improve cellular metabolism and treat the underlying causes of poor metabolic health and cardiovascular disease
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| [20-July-2021] |
| CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rivus Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to improving cardio-metabolic health, today announced the completion of a $35 million Series A financing. Rivus is advancing a new class of oral, once daily, small molecule therapeutics called Controlled Metabolic Accelerators (CMAs), designed to improve cellular metabolism and treat the underlying cause of highly-prevalent metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. The round was co-led by Longitude Capital and Medicxi and RxCapital also participated.
“More than 40 million people in the U.S. alone are living with cardio-metabolic disorders, conditions that adversely impact a person’s health and quality of life, as well as place significant cost burdens on healthcare systems. While many existing therapeutic options address the downstream effects of metabolic disease, they do little to address the underlying cause – greater consumption of energy than is required by the body, which over time results in inefficient cellular metabolism and the excess accumulation of fat,” said Allen Cunningham, President and CEO, Rivus Pharmaceuticals. “Our CMAs are designed to effectively target the root cause of these diseases by improving cellular metabolism with the potential to halt the progress of, or even reverse, these diseases.” CMAs provide a new, measured approach to activating mitochondrial uncoupling, a natural process in the body that regulates and dissipates energy. By ferrying protons out of the mitochondrial intermembrane space, CMAs cue the increased oxidation of sugars and fats, while maintaining the same baseline production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Activating this process results in the reduction of accumulated fat and the prevention of additional fat accumulation throughout the body. Rivus is currently conducting a Phase 2a clinical study with its lead CMA therapeutic, HU6. The Series A financing will enable Rivus to advance a pipeline of CMA therapies to treat a range of metabolic conditions including type 2 diabetes, severe hypertriglyceridemia (SHTG), non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), as well as cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). “We are very encouraged by early clinical results of HU6 and the potential for CMAs to deliver a new and highly-effective approach to improving metabolic health,” said Patrick Enright, Managing Director at Longitude Capital. “There is tremendous global potential for CMAs to fundamentally change the therapeutic landscape across a variety of difficult to manage chronic diseases related to metabolic health.” “Rivus has recently completed its Phase 1 program for HU6, and the results exceeded our expectations, demonstrating an early positive impact on key metabolic parameters, while being well-tolerated,” said David Grainger, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor at Medicxi. “Phase 2 studies will provide important insights into HU6’s efficacy in specific metabolic and cardiovascular diseases with this very promising new therapy, and we are excited to advance these programs in partnership with Rivus.” About Rivus Pharmaceuticals About Longitude Capital About Medicxi Medicxi’s team has been investing in life sciences for over 20 years. Globally, it has invested in 91 innovative biopharma companies and achieved 32 exits through IPO and M&A, including Genmab, PanGenetics (sold to AbbVie), Cellzome (sold to GSK), Micromet (sold to Amgen), Molecular Partners, XO1 (sold to Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.), Minerva Neurosciences, Padlock Therapeutics (sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb), Gadeta (structured transaction with Gilead), Impact BioMedicxines (sold to Celgene) and Adaptive Biotechnologies. Medicxi is also the founding investor of Centessa Pharmaceuticals. Please see https://www.medicxi.com/ for more information. About RxCapital
SOURCE Rivus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. |
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