Sierra Neuropharmaceuticals Inc. said Thursday that it has received $21.5 million in Series A financing to develop a new approach to treating epilepsy.
Cambridge, Mass.-based HealthCare Ventures, and Morgenthaler Ventures and Sequel Venture Partners, both of which have a Colorado presence, get preferred shares in the company as the main financiers.
Funding will go toward the pre-clinical development, regulatory approval and completion of a human trial on the company’s first product, as well as development of a second, said Dr. Dan Abrams, Sierra founder and acting chief executive.
The Aurora-based startup bio pharmaceutical company, founded in 2005, reformulates drugs to treat neurological diseases such as severe epilepsy, depression and schizophrenia in patients who have not responded well to other treatment, Abrams said.
The reformulated drugs are placed in implantable pumps under the skin that deliver the medication directly to fluid around the brain for more effective treatment, Abrams said.
“This offers a new approach to circumvent some of the problems that have been persistent in spite of people’s work in the field,” Abrams said.
Denise Brown, executive director of the Colorado BioScience Association, said Colorado over the past several years has seen an average of $300 million in venture-capital investment in bioscience companies, with individual deals ranging from $6 million to more than $60 million. Though this $21.5 million deal places Sierra in the middle of that range, Brown said the size is a big deal for a company this young.
“The promise of the technology is so compelling that it has gotten a lot of early attention,” Brown said.
The first product is a reformulated oral anti-convulsant that is very effective in treating patients with refractory epilepsy, which Abrams said means they continue to have seizures despite treatment. The drug as-is has serious side effects, such as problems interacting with other medication, something Abrams hopes direct administration to the brain will bypass because of lower and more direct doses.
The second product will be announced in three to six months.
Abrams said research is in the pre-clinical stage, with plans for the first product to be in clinical trials in 2010 and out on the market in 2013. He said he expects the funding to last two to three years.
The University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office licensed the technology to Sierra in April after funding in part its development, said Tom Smerdon, Technology Transfer Office director of licensing and new business development.
The technology was developed by four CU neuroscientists, and three of the four went on to found the company.
“We believe the technology has great promise as a much more effective treatment regimen for certain types of diseases of the brain,” Smerdon said.
Dr. Sheri Friedman of Neurology Associates of Northern Colorado in Fort Collins said that though the technology is promising for patients who suffer from refractory epilepsy, she expects its practical application will take awhile to gain ground because it is a highly technical and invasive procedure.
Alex McCarthy: 303-954-1381 or amccarthy@denverpost.com
