Hospitals, Pharma

Theravasc Inc. wins $500,000 investment commitment to try vascular disease drug

Theravasc Inc., a Cleveland company that is reformulating an approved drug to treat vascular diseases, has received investment commitments of $500,000 to do its initial clinical study.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Theravasc Inc., a Cleveland company that is reformulating an approved drug to treat vascular diseases, has received investment commitments of $500,000 to do its initial clinical study.

JumpStart Inc., the venture development organization in Cleveland, and Portal Capital LLC, the early stage life sciences investment firm in Beachwood, each committed $250,000.

In June, Theravasc received a $100,000 grant from the Innovation Fund at the Lorain County Community College Foundation.

Theravasc will use the money to begin a pharmacokenetic study of its reformulated sodium nitrate to treat peripheral arterial disease in diabetic patients at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, said Tony Giordano, the company’s president and chief executive.

That’s where Giordano, a Cleveland native, is assistant dean of research and a technology transfer professional. Giordano decided to start Theravasc to commercialize the drug formulation of Christopher Kevil, an associate professor of pathology at the university, rather than license the formulation to another company for development.

Giordano, who has launched several companies to commercialize drugs to treat cancer, among other illnesses, chose Cleveland for Theravasc because of the cardiovascular expertise of clinicians and researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University. He also chose Northeast Ohio for its access to early stage capital and support for medical start-ups.

“Theravasc represents an important opportunity for Northeast Ohio to have a meaningful impact in the world of biopharmaceutical intervention — a space in which the region has not flourished to date,” said Dr. John Zak, a Portal Capital partner, in a written statement.

Giordano plans to move back to Northeast Ohio to run a Phase 2 clinical study of his company’s drug formulation later this year. That study would try to find out whether the drug improves blood flow for sufferers of peripheral arterial disease (PAD), a narrowing of the blood vessels in the extremities, usually the legs.

The disease often caused by a buildup of  plaque in leg arteries affects up to 12 million people in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (pdf). Not only can PAD significantly limit patients’ ability to walk, it also raises their risk of stroke and heart attack, the NIH said. Currently, the disease is being treated with blood clot-busting drugs, but what sufferers need is better blood circulation, Giordano said.

Because sodium nitrate already is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an injection, developing a capsule formulation to treat vascular disease should cost a fraction of developing a new drug, Giordano said. He’s trying to raise $2.5 million in grants and investments to get the formulation through the initial trials.

In about 18 months, he expects to raise “major financing” of between $10 million and $20 million to complete development and testing of the drug.

“What we really believe that this drug’s going to do is promote new blood vessel growth in the affected limb,” he said. “And by promoting that new blood vessel growth, then you’re going to reduce some of the neuropathy, because you’re going to get nutrients back out to those nerves.

“You’re going to promote wound healing and you’re going to improve the overall quality of their life tremendously,” he said.

http://www.jumpstartinc.org/Communications/JumpStartReleases/Details.html?NewsID=943

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