Ann Arbor, Michigan, biopharmaceutical company Cerenis Therapeutics added $13.9 million to a July investment round that it will use to continue clinical trials of a drug to treat heart disease.
Co-based in Toulouse, France, Cerenis closed a $55.7 million (1 euro = $1.39) C Series round in July. The recent investment by IXO Private Equity, a leading French private equity investor, and IRDI, which IXO advises, as well as “undisclosed international private investors,” brought the round to $69.6 million, the company said.
Since its 2005 start, Cerenis has raised about $163 million from the likes of the Fund for Strategic Investment, Sofinnova Partners, HealthCap, Alta Partners and TVM Capital, EDF Ventures, OrbiMed and Daiwa Corporate Investment.
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The company has several cholesterol-related drugs in its pipeline. But its lead candidate, CER-001, mimics high-density lipid (“good”) cholesterol and can rapidly reverse atherosclerotic plaque, which causes heart disease.
Cerenis will use its latest investment to do Phase II clinical trial development of its HDL therapy, which is based on apolipoprotein A-I, the major protein component of HDL cholesterol.
A 2007 study of a similar drug showed “a favorable rapid treatment effect” that surprised Dr. Steven Nissen, cardiology chief at the Cleveland Clinic. “To see a regression of disease that has taken several decades to develop with just four doses is really asking a lot for a drug,” Nissen told TheHeart.org, at the time.
“The authors of this study have certainly opened a door; we now need to see if they can jump through it,” Nissen said, with a caution. “We must be cautious, as the primary end point was not met, but we have had so many failures that anything that shows a glimmer of hope now makes us excited.”
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Maybe that’s why Cerenis Chief Operating Officer Bill Brinkerhoff calls a drug that causes the regression of arterial plaque “the holy grail” of cardiovascular disease therapeutics. If all goes well in clinical trials, Cerenis aims to file for regulatory approval for its lead drug within about five years, Brinkerhoff said in July.
Cerenis was founded by former executives of another Ann Arbor drug developer, Esperion Therapeutics. Esperion’s founder, president and chief executive, Roger Newton, is a co-inventor of Lipitor, the Pfizer cholesterol-fighting blockbuster. Newton started Esperion in 1998, sold it to Pfizer for $1.3 billion in 2004, then restarted the company in 2008 after Pfizer divested it.
