Coda Therapeutics raise additional $20M for series B

Print 25 July 2012
Private Equity Hub

CoDa Therapeutics has raised an additional $20 million from RusnanoMedInvest in a second close of its Series B financing round. This brings the total Series B Round to nearly $40 million following the first close late last year. All current investors, including Domain Associates, GBS Ventures and BioPacificVentures participated. San Diego-based CoDa is a biopharmaceutical company working to develop drug therapies for wounds that do not heal properly, including venous leg and diabetic foot ulcers.

CoDa Therapeutics, Inc. announced today that it raised an additional $20M from RusnanoMedInvest (“RMI” a subsidiary of RUSNANO) in a second close of its Series B financing round. The transaction is the first investment under a joint investment agreement between RUSNANO and Domain Associates that was reached in March 2012. This brings the total Series B Round to nearly $40 million following the first close late last year. All current investors, including Domain Associates, GBS Ventures and BioPacificVentures participated.

A portion of the proceeds of the financing will be used to expand late stage clinical trials of Nexagon(R), the Company’s lead product candidate, for additional indications including diabetic foot ulcers. CoDa recently initiated a 160 patient multi-center Phase 2 diabetic foot ulcer trial in the United States and will include additional clinical sites in Russia over coming months. CoDa is also currently conducting a 300 patient Phase 2b trial of Nexagon(R) for the treatment of people with venous leg ulcers in the United States, New Zealand and South Africa. Nexagon(R) was highly effective as a novel wound therapy for venous leg ulcers in an earlier clinical trial. In its first Phase 2 trial, nearly one third of patients were completely healed after four weeks following just three applications of Nexagon(R) compared to only 6% complete healing in a control arm (p<0.02). Nexagon(R) operates through gap junction modulation, a unique therapeutic approach that enables tissue repair through regulating gap junction proteins and intercellular interaction. The company owns numerous issued and pending patents covering this technology.

The transaction also involves a licensing of intellectual property rights for Nexagon(R) in Russia, potentially accelerating its availability on the Russian market. CoDa will receive an upfront product payment and royalties based on sales.

Bradford J. Duft, President and Chief Executive Officer of CoDa Therapeutics said, “This investment by RMI will allow CoDa to further evaluate the clinical efficacy of connexin gap junction modulation in multiple chronic wound settings and further advance CoDa’s technology in key areas where unwanted inflammation occurs in human pathology. Mis-regulated cellular gap junction communication is increasingly recognized as a key factor in a number of disease conditions and CoDa is at the leading edge of utilizing gap junction modulation technologies to target these conditions.”

“We are glad that CoDa Therapeutics and Nexagon(R) are the first recipient of funds under our joint investment agreement with RUSNANO,” added Dr. James Blair, a Domain Associates Partner with over 40 years’ experience with venture and emerging growth companies. “CoDa brings together excellent science, an experienced management team, a solid value proposition, a clear execution path and addresses a global unmet medical need.”

About CoDa Therapeutics, Inc. — CoDa Therapeutics is a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing novel targeted therapies that address major unmet medical needs in inflammation, wound-healing and tissue repair. The company is pioneering a new field of science known as gap junction modulation, using a new class of therapeutics that can modulate wound responses and reduce inflammation. CoDa has two open INDs and has completed multiple Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials in both skin and eye, including Investigator-Initiated studies, where Nexagon(R) was shown to be safe and tolerable following administration to over 380 wounds on more than 180 subjects. CoDa’s technology, which can be applied topically, has been shown to work in preclinical studies across a wide variety of wounds and inflammatory settings and conditions. CoDa presently has issued patents in the US, Europe and elsewhere, and pending applications in more than a dozen other patent families directed to methods and compositions for the treatment of acute wounds, chronic wounds, scarring, abnormal scarring, inflammation and pain, fibrosis, surgical adhesions, and orthopedic procedures, as well as combination therapies and improved medical devices.

About Nexagon(R) — The active ingredient in Nexagon(R) is CODA001, a natural, unmodified antisense oligonucleotide that down-regulates the key gap junction protein connexin43 to dampen inflammatory responses and enhance healing. Data show that for optimal healing connexin43 is normally dialed-down at the edges of acute wounds (i.e., wounds that will heal normally). CoDa has demonstrated in the clinic, however, that connexin43 is wrongly up-regulated at the edge of human chronic wounds (i.e., wounds that are difficult to heal such as venous and diabetic ulcers). CoDa believes that one can better target available medical options and design more effective wound-healing alternatives by devising a therapeutic approach based on biological mechanisms naturally at work or conversely, at fault, in a given situation The answer is thought to lie in connexin43, which may be seen as a “master switch” in wound healing that is temporarily turned “off” for superior healing of acute wounds, and when left “on” can lead to the unwanted inflammation and/or stalled healing characteristic of chronic and other difficult or slow-to-heal wounds. 

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