Aragon Pharma Raises $8M

Bruce V. Bigelow5/21/09

San Diego-based Aragon Pharmaceuticals says it has raised $8 million in a Series A financing led by The Column Group, a San Francisco, CA, biotech venture capital firm and OrbiMed Advisors, a $5 billion healthcare investment firm based in New York. The company said the funding will be used to develop new small molecule drugs for the treatment of hormone-resistant cancers, with an initial focus on prostate and breast cancer. Aragon was founded by Charles Sawyers, a researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Michael Jung, a UCLA professor of chemistr and biochemistry.

Bruce V. Bigelow is the editor of Xconomy San Diego. You can e-mail him at bbigelow@xconomy.com or call (619) 669-8788