Company name: Sonexa Therapeutics Inc.
Industry: Pharmaceuticals.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
Location: San Diego, California.
Solution/product: Sonexa develops drug treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Its lead compound, ST101, is an oral drug intended to address the underlying pathology of Alzheimer’s. The company hasn’t disclosed the drug’s mechanism of action, but says that it has demonstrated effectiveness in restoring learning and memory in preclinical models.
Money raised: $2 million in debt, option, warrant or right to acquire other securities, from six investors, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission document. Sonexa raised a $30 million series A in 2008 and has received additional nonequity financing to the tune of at least $2.2 million since then, according to regulatory documents.
How it will be used: It’s been a while since this company has been in the news, and CEO Eckard Weber didn’t return an email requesting an update. In 2008, he told FierceBiotech that the series A would get the therapy through phase 2 by mid-2010. The clinical trials database lists three studies of ST101 including two preliminary efficacy trials completed in 2010 and 2011.
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Investors: Previous investors include Alta Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Domain Associates, AgeChem Venture Fund and MC Life Science Ventures.
Management team: CEO Weber is a partner at Domain Associates and has led several Domain portfolio companies including Ocera Therapeutics, Orexigen Therapeutics and NovaCardia, which was acquired by Merck in 2007. He’s also been a board member of six pharmaceutical companies that were acquired. Chief business officer Stan Abel was the CEO of Corthera when it was sold to Novartis in 2010.
Market size: Market research firms have forecast that the Alzheimer’s disease market will nearly triple its 2010 value by 2020, but a portion of that was likely hinged on Eli Lilly’s experimental drug solanezumab and Pfizer/Johnson & Johnson’s bapineuzumab, the latter of which was just pulled out of large-scale clinical trials because it failed to improve memory or thinking skills of people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s. As many as 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, a number that’s expected to increase as the baby boomer generation ages.
Competitors: Upwards of 150 companies are working in this space, according to Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. The market is dominated by symptomatic therapies like Eisai/Pfizer’s Aricept, Janssen’s Razadyne and Novartis’ Exelon, and receptor antagonists. A slew of newer drug candidates have failed in late-stage trials, and now the world is awaiting data on Lilly’s solanezumab in the coming weeks.
