San Diegos Tioga Pharmaceuticals Raises $18 Million to Develop IBS Drug
Summary
San Diego’s Tioga Pharmaceuticals Raises $18 Million to Develop IBS Drug Xconomy San Diego — Tioga Pharmaceuticals, a virtual company based in San Diego with just two fulltime employees, is announcing today it has raised $18 million in private equity to fund a late-stage clinical trial of asimadoline, its experimental drug for irritable bowel disorder.In return for equity in Tioga, Merck granted the startup rights to asimadoline and agreed to provide project management expertise.As a virtual company, Tioga outsources all aspects of clinical development—human trials, chemistry, and manufacturing, regulatory, legal and IP management—in a business model that reduces its financial risk by keeping overhead to a minimum as development progresses from one phase to the next.Tioga describes asimadoline as an oral drug that targets kappa opioid receptors found in the digestive tract.Tioga Chairman and CEO Stuart Collinson, who is also a partner at San Diego’s Forward Ventures, told me last fall that the drug was a good bet because the potential market was fairly large and the only approved drug for the condition, alosetron hydrochloride (Lotronex), carries a black-box warning, the strongest possible, and may only be prescribed by physicians enrolled in a prescribing program that requires them to inform patients about the drug’s risks.
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