RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK—Cempra Pharmaceuticals, a developer of anti-infective drugs, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from investors including Aisling Capital, Intersouth Partners, Optimer Pharmaceuticals and banker I. Wistar Morris, III, PE Hub reports citing a regulatory filing.
Cempra closed its A round at $22 million in August 2006.
Cempra was founded in January 2006 by a team with experience in discovering and developing anti-infectives.
The company is focused on developing improved antibiotics for the increasingly significant problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The increasingly frequency and aggressiveness seen with bacterial drug resistance continues to challenge physicians and patients as the use of antibiotics expands. Cempra’s first program addresses the need for a new generation of advanced macrolides [a special type of antibiotic drugs] that will address this issue of resistance while providing better safety and efficacy.
At the time of the A round funding, Andrew Schiff of Aisling Capital said, “We are very aware of the great need for new antibacterial agents to meet the rising need for treating infections caused by drug resistant bacteria. Cempra has a team experienced in developing antibiotics and we are excited about investing in this team and the products.”
The company has in-licensed compounds from Optimer Pharmaceuticals that have the same spectrum of anti-bacterial activity as Sanofi-Aventis’ telithromycin, but with additional activity against streptococci resistant to the antibiotic and organisms resistant to the three leading macrolide/ketolide antibiotics.
Acccording to the company, in the antibiotic arena, macrolides/ketolides are viewed as a low risk/high reward area where there are few competitors. Global sales of antibiotics were over $12 billion in 2003, with macrolides contributing global sales of over $5.6 billion in 2003, $2.5 billion of that in the United States alone.
The world market for anti-infectives is more than $30 billion and it is the third largest pharmaceutical segment.
The technology Cempra has licensed from Optimer allows it to change its antibiotic compounds in ways that have show “activity unprecedented for this class of drug.”
On the Web: www.cempra.com
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