If there’s any truth to the notion that corporate VC-backed companies have a higher rate of overall success than those without corporate VC funding, here’s a company we should be keeping an eye on.
Naurex Inc., a young pharmaceutical company focused on psychiatry and neurology, rounded up $38 million from lead investor Baxter Ventures and a long line of others including Lundbeck, Takeda Ventures, Shire, Savitr Capital, Adams Street Partners, Latterell Venture Partners, Genesys Capital, PathoCapital, Druid BioVentures and Northwestern University.
It will use proceeds from the Series B round to continue a Phase 2b trial of GLYX-13, its lead drug candidate for the treatment of depression, and initiate trials of a second-generation drug.
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Naurex is developing what it says is a new mechanism of action for modulating the NMDA receptor, which if overstimulated is thought to cause cell death associated with many neurological disorders. GLYX-13 is an IV drug that in initial clinical trials produced significant reductions in depression scores within 24 hours in patients who failed antidepressant therapy, according to Naurex.
CEO Derek Small said in a prepared statement that the drug has the potential to address failings of current antidepressants without serious side effects. It has a target New Drug Application date of 2016.
The company’s second-generation compound is an oral drug based on the same platform that is scheduled to begin clinical trials in early 2013.
Some NMDA receptor modulators like ketamine, an anesthetic drug, have shown antidepressant effects in lab studies but are associated with serious adverse effects. Memantine is another NMDAR modulator used in FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drugs marketed by Merz, Forest and Lundbeck – one of Naurex Inc.’s investors.
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Two of Naurex’s pharma corporate investors have done other deals this quarter – Baxter Ventures invested in cancer/immune disorder drug startup Gliknik Inc., while Shire invested in a drug delivery method for drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier being developed by ArmaGen Technologies.
The Evanston, Illinois, company was founded in 2006 based on the work of researchers led by Dr. Joseph R. Moskal at Northwestern University’s Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, and raised a $18 million Series A in 2011.
