New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the SEC for an initial public offering. The company, which is developing antibiotics, has yet to determine the number of shares it will offer or the price range. Deutsche Bank Securities will manage the offering, with assistance from William Blair & Company, Lazard Capital Markets, and Needham & Company.

Rib-X developed a drug-discovery platform based around an atomic, three-dimensional picture of the interactions between drug candidates and the bacteria they are targeting. The company has two antibiotics in clinical trials, one to treat skin infections and the other to treat drug-resistant infections. It has also partnered with French drug giant Sanofi to develop a new class of antibiotics—a deal that could be worth as much as $772 million to Rib-X.

Since its inception in October 2000, Rib-X has raised a total of $208.4 million in private funding. Its investors include Warburg Pincus, MedImmune Ventures, and Oxford Bioscience Partners.

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New England biotechs and devices firms have been active in nabbing partnerships, landing investments, and progressing with clinical programs this week.

—Syndax Pharmaceuticals, an epigenetics startup out of Waltham, MA, revealed three sets of data on its lung cancer drug at the Study of Lung Cancer conference this week. The drug, entinostat, is in Phase 2 clinical testing, and acts against certain enzymes that influence specific epigenetic alterations that drive cancer growth and drug tolerance. Syndax aims to combine the drug with other cancer drugs to treat tumors that haven’t responded to other therapies.

—Xconomy national biotech editor Luke Timmerman caught up with Alkermes CEO Richard Pops about his plans to turn the Waltham, MA-based company into a biotech powerhouse. Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS), Luke wrote, has seen its stock climb about 30 percent since it announced its plans in May to buy Elan Drug Technologies for $960 million.

—Rib-X Pharmaceuticals could pocket about $772 million through a research and licensing agreement it inked with Sanofi (NYSE: SNY) surrounding Rib-X’s RX-04 program for the treatment of resistant Gram-negative and resistant Gram-positive infections. Sanofi payed $10 million upfront, with another potential $9 million to come in research milestones. Each product selected through the program could earn Rib-X up to $186 million in a mix of development, regulatory, and commercial milestones.

—Cambridge, MA-based obesity drug developer Zafgen nabbed a $33 million Series C financing led by existing investors such as Third Rock Ventures and Atlas Venture, to put toward advancing its lead drug candidate through Phase 2 clinical trials. The deal doubles Zafgen’s funding pot to $66 million.

—Maynard, MA-based Allegro Diagnostics, which is developing a platform for the early detection of lung cancer, said that it added another $5.4 million in Series A extension financing, from existing investors Kodiak Venture Partners and Catalyst Health Ventures

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New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals announced today that it could receive about $772 million from Sanofi (NYSE: SNY) under a new research collaboration and option for Sanofi to license novel classes of antibiotics from Rib-X’s RX-04 program for the treatment of resistant Gram-negative and resistant Gram-positive infections. Sanofi paid $10 million upfront and could pay up to $9 million in near-term research milestones, as well as other clinical and commercialization milestones and royalties. Rib-X could also receive $86 million in development and regulatory milestones and $100 million in commercial milestones for each product identified in the collaboration—Sanofi is targeting four for now, but there is no upper limit, the companies said.

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There are lots of exceptions to the rules in the biotech business, and a big one jumped out me this past week, related to antibiotics.

One day, Reuters ran a story about the overall abysmal state of the world’s pipeline of new antibiotics. Next day, there were reports about how San Diego-based Optimer Pharmaceuticals appears poised to sail through a meeting scheduled for tomorrow of an FDA advisory panel that will size up the merits of its new antibiotic.

Having followed a number of antibiotics developers for the past few years, it strikes me there is no shortage of ideas for fighting dangerous bacterial infections. There are interesting companies all over the map: South San Francisco companies like Achaogen and Theravance (NASDAQ: THRX); Watertown, MA-based Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals and Lexington, MA-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CBST); New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals; and a pair of San Diego companies, Trius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: TSRX) and Optimer (NASDAQ: OPTR).

There is government funding available to support this work—Achaogen alone has raked in $155 million in support from government and philanthropic support, not to mention $95 million from venture capitalists. The drugs themselves often perform relatively consistently from early-stage to late-stage studies. And when they work, they can make sizable amounts of money—see Pfizer’s linezolid (Zyvox), which generated $1.18 billion in worldwide sales last year.

Yes, there has been some shifting of regulatory standards at the FDA, which put a crimp in many antibiotic business plans over the past year. But given all the forces properly aligned to support antibiotics, this shouldn’t be a classic case of market failure. And yet here we are, with only five new antibiotics approved by the FDA from 2003 through 2007, as Andy Pollack reported in the New York Times in November. FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg has said the number of new antibiotics in development is “distressingly low.” Only five of the 13 biggest Big Pharma companies work on antibiotics now, which partly reflects their enduring fixation on blockbusters that can move the financial needle at their overly bloated organizations (but that’s another story, covered here last week.)

The lack of innovation in the antibiotics field is worrisome. Public health officials fret that because of the overuse of the antibiotics on the market today, we are encouraging the rise of more drug-resistant “superbugs” like the sometimes deadly MRSA and C.difficile. More, undoubtedly, will evolve in the future.

This is really just a hunch, but I would argue that a big part of the problem here is an overall lack of will in the biotech industry to create new antibiotics. While everybody talks about the hot new breast cancer drugs or the new thing for diabetes—which are sort of like biotech’s versions of the iPad and iPhone in terms of glamour—the only people who seem really interested in antibiotics are the people at those companies mentioned above. There have been some painful regulatory … Next Page »

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The big Nor’easter this week didn’t get in the way of big news from New England’s life sciences firms.

—Civitas Therapeutics, a startup operating out of Alkermes’ (NASDAQ: ALKS) leased facility in Chelsea, MA, is working to commercialize inhaled drug delivery from Waltham, MA-based Alkermes. The firm has about $20 million in first-round funding to develop the technology for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, Ryan wrote.

—Cambridge, MA-based stealthy biotech company Dekkun revealed it had raise $9.9 million of an equity financing that could hit $30 million, via a filing with the SEC. The firm is operating out of the offices of venture firm HealthCare Ventures, which is also represented on the board of directors at Dekkun.

—-Rib-X Pharmaceuticals of New Haven, CT, said it raised $20 million in financing, led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Rib-X is developing drugs targeted at traditionally antibiotic-resistant infections.

—Cambridge-based Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals announced that Celtic Therapeutics exercised its option to buy the company’s lead drug, RX-10045, a treatment for dry eye and other eye diseases. Celtic will move the drug, among Resolvyx’s crop of small molecule derivatives of omega-3 fish oils, into Phase III clinical trials later this year.

—Boston venture firm Oxford BioSciences held the first close of its sixth fund at $66 million, according to Fortune’s Dan Primack. Part of the money came from the government of South Korea and the city government of Seoul.

—iWalk, a Cambridge developer of an advanced prosthetic ankle and foot, raised $15 million in third-round funding, the Boston Globe reported. Sigma Partners, General Catalyst, and WFD Ventures participated in the financing.

—Bedford, MA-based Ocular Therapeutix added $6 million to its Series C round, bringing the financing’s total to $21 million. The startup, which is developing advancing hydrogel technology for protecting the eye after ophthalmic surgeries and for delivering drugs to the eye, raised the first $15 million of the round from Polaris Venture Partners, according to a June 2009 announcement.

—Ryan caught up with Daphne Zohar of Boston-based PureTech Ventures, which has recently helped launch Vedanta Biosciences and Entrega. Zohar, who previously served as CEO of baldness treatment developer Follica, dished on what distinguishes PureTech.

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Dealmaking activity in New England’s tech and life sciences sectors continued at a blizzardy pace this week. Hold on to your hat…

—Marlborough, MA-based biofuels developer Qteros raised $22 million from new and existing investors in the first tranche of a Series C financing.

—IT services provider MindShift Technologies of Waltham, MA, acquired Alpheon, a Morrisville, NC-based IT firm focusing on healthcare clients.

—Somerville, MA-based XL Hybrids, which converts commercial vehicles into hybrids, took in $2 million from undisclosed investors and forged an alliance with U.K.-based retrofit kin maker Ashwoods Automotive.

—Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX), the Natick, MA-based medical devices giant, acquired Boston-based Intelect Medical, a developer of deep brain stimulation technology, for about $60 million in cash.

—Waltham-based On-Q-ity inked a deal with Laboratory Corporation of America (NYSE:LH) to commercialize On-Q-ity’s technology for detecting tumor cells circulating in the blood.

—Civitas, a Chelsea, MA-based spinout of Alkermes (NASDAQ:ALKS) focusing on inhaled drug-delivery technology, raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Longitude Capital and Canaan Partners.

—Cambridge-based Epizyme, a developer of drugs based on the emerging science of epigenetics, partnered with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in a deal worth $20 million upfront and up to $630 million more in milestones fees.

—Barre, VT-based Wind Power Holdings, the parent company of wind turbine developer Northern Power Systems, raised $12.7 million in equity-based funding from 33 investors, according to an SEC filing.

—Boston-based educational software maker Jenzabar acquired the assets of Allurent, the e-commerce firm reported to be defunct last month, and will invest a “seven-figure sum” in Allurent over the next 12 months, according to Jenzabar CEO Robert Maginn.

—Antibiotic developer Rib-X Pharmaceuticals of New Haven, CT, raised $20 million in a financing round led by Warburg Pincus.

—A number of other startups scored venture dollars as well: Concord, MA-based KnowledgeVision Systems ($2 million from GrandBanks Capital and others); Cambridge, MA-based Labtiva ($2 million); Newton, MA-based Life Image ($12M from Cardinal Partners and Galen Partners); Waltham, MA-based EyeGate Pharmaceuticals ($5.9 million); Acton, MA-based Neuroptix ($4.6 million); Waltham-based DynaTrace Software ($4 million); Southbury, CT-based Doctors Research Group ($7.7 million); and Cambridge-based Dekkun ($9.9 million).

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New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals has rounded up another sizable investment to carry out its antibiotic R&D.

The company said today it has raised $20 million in a financing led by Warburg Pincus, the giant private equity firm. Rib-X didn’t say in its statement who else invested, or whether it represents debt or equity financing. The last we wrote about Rib-X was in June, after the company had pulled in $5.5 million in debt financing.

Rib-X pronounced (RYE-bex), founded in 2000, has raised a ton of financing in its history. The company had pulled together $158 million as of this time a year ago, when I spoke to founder and former CEO Susan Froshauer for a detailed update. At that time, she was hoping to move one of the company’s lead drug candidates, delafloxacin, into a study of 800 patients with antibiotic-resistant infections they picked up in the hospital. She was also looking for a Big Pharma partner.

The big partnership hasn’t come to fruition yet. Back in March, Froshauer was replaced as CEO by Mark Leuchtenberger. Rib-X, in today’s announcement, said it plans to take an interim step with a smaller Phase IIb study to “validate new objective endpoints” that will help it evaluate delafloxacin before the drug candidate goes into a bigger, pivotal clinical trial. The company also plans to run a long-term animal study with its other advanced drug candidate, radezolid, to see how it stacks up with competitors, and it plans to nominate another candidate against multi-drug resistant bacteria for clinical trials.

“We are grateful for the confidence and continued strong financial support of our investors and look forward to being able to deliver on the clinical promise of our pipeline,” Leuchtenberger said in today’s statement.

I’m planning to meet Leuchtenberger tomorrow at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference and will plan to follow up with more later on what to expect from Rib-X in the year ahead.

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Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals raised a big $45 million venture round back in June, and now scientists can see more clearly why it’s been able to raise all that dough.

The Watertown, MA-based company made a series of 10 different poster presentations over the past few days at the biggest antibiotics meeting of the year, the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in Boston. Tetraphase showed that its lead tetracycline drug in development was effective against all but one of the major bugs it sought to kill in animals; it was well-tolerated in a convenient once-daily intravenous dose; the drug can be made into an oral pill; and that its chemistry platform has potential to generate more than just one drug.

“People are always looking for new antibiotic products, and there’s not enough in development,” says Tetraphase CEO Guy Macdonald. “People are excited about the spectrum of activity we have shown and our oral potential. We’re not a one product company. We have a platform that can develop novel and diverse profiles of antibiotics.”

Tetraphase, born in 2006 with technology from Harvard University, is setting out to custom-build new tetracycline antibiotics with properties that couldn’t be engineered via conventional fermentation methods. Tetraphase has used its new technique to synthesize antibiotics that can kill a broad variety of bugs from the two major classes of bacteria (gram positive and gram negative), and also more narrowly focused and potent drugs to kill specific bugs. While public health officials regularly sound alarm bells about antibiotic overuse contributing to the rise of drug-resistant “superbugs,” the biotech industry hasn’t developed much in the way of innovative new antibiotics versatile enough to kill a wide variety of the pathogens. Pfizer’s tigecycline (Tygacil) is the only new member of the tetracycline class approved by the FDA in the past 40 years, so Tetraphase is betting that if it can navigate the clinical trial process, it will be able to fulfill a real market need.

Guy Macdonald

Many of the other venture-backed companies in the antibiotic market—San Diego’s Trius Therapeutics, New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, and South San Francisco-based Achoagen—are largely focused on antibiotics that work against a specific type of bug or a certain property, which makes many of their compounds what scientists call “narrow spectrum” antibiotics. (Update and clarification 1:30 pm ET, Sept. 16): While one of Rib-X’s lead drugs, radezolid, fits this category, another advanced candidate, delafloxacin, is a “broad spectrum” antibiotic).

Tetraphase is attempting to develop its lead compound, TP-434, as a “broad spectrum” antibiotic that’s supposed to kill a whole range of bugs that resist other treatments, whether they have surface properties that make them classified as gram-negative or gram-positive pathogens. That’s thought to be especially useful for physicians seeking to treat the most severe infections people sometimes get in hospital intensive-care units, and for when physicians don’t yet have lab results to tell them exactly what kind of bug has infected the patient.

Tetraphase presented data from a series of animal studies at the ICAAC conference that suggests its new antibiotic ought to work against five of the six major bugs that cause most infections in hospitals and that are hard to treat. The list of so-called ESKAPE pathogens includes Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella species, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species. Only one of those bugs, pseudomonas aeruginosa, was able to resist the Tetraphase drug in animal tests, Macdonald says.

Part of the Tetraphase R&D program looked at the lowest possible dose required … Next Page »

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Mercator Therapeutics is at the beginning of a journey to commercialize drugs derived from a new way of discovering treatments for cancer. Recently, the biotech startup closed a $2 million seed round of financing and completed an initial licensing deal for its peptide-based drugs. It now plans to settle into its first corporate office in Waltham, MA, after operating virtually since its founding in November 2009.

While Mercator is a young outfit, the executives behind the venture are veterans of the biotech industry. For instance, Roy Lobb, Mercator’s co-founder, chief scientist, and chairman, was one of the lead scientists behind Biogen Idec’s hot multiple sclerosis drug, natalizumab (Tysabri), and has been a founder of several biotechs such as Waltham, MA-based Avila Therapeutics. In fact, it’s the firm’s combination of exciting talent and recognizable names that drew me back to its story.

Last month, we were early on the news about the firm’s seed round and licensing deal with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Yesterday, Lobb, Mercator co-founder Mark Leuchtenberger, and CEO Chris Guiffre mapped out where the company wants to go with its drugs, which are based on a new approach to discovering cancer treatments called in vivo phage display. They also provided some perspective on the potential power of this technology, developed at MD Anderson, to help improve doctors’ ability to deliver cancer-killing drugs only to disease tissues, sparing healthy tissues.

At MD Anderson, researchers and Mercator co-founders Wadih Arap and Renata Pasqualini have been working on the vivo phage display technology for years. Its aim is to discover specific protein fragments, or peptides, that home in on tumor cells. The system also allows them to identify which specific receptors on the cells those peptides found their way to, Lobb explained.

Once it identifies cancer-targeting peptides, Mercator aims to turn them into delivery vehicles that will carry various tumor-killing agents to cancer cells. The startup has licensed nine peptide-receptor pairs for cancer treatment from MD Anderson. The lead drug involved in the deal is in initial human clinical trials for patients whose prostate cancer has spread to their bones. The team at MD Anderson is running that trial, and Mercator’s Guiffre says that data from the study are expected to show whether the peptide drug found its way to the intended tumor sites.

The MD Anderson researchers hope to identify more such tumor-targeting peptides through a special program at the center. In it, patients with terminal cancer are injected, under strict ethical guidelines, with libraries of engineered viruses called … Next Page »

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New England-area deal-making news came back with a roar in the last week. We saw headlines of stock sales, myriad stages of venture funding, acquisitions, and a top venture capital firm’s moves to raise money for a new fund.

—Etouches, a Ridgefield, CT-based meeting planning company turned software-as-a-service business, said it raised $2.5 million in its first round of venture capital funding, led by Greycroft Partners. Cava Capital and Connecticut Innovations also participated in the financing for etouches, which makes software for managing events.

—Healthrageous, a maker of software designed to give personalized medical advice on issues like weight loss and diabetes, raised $6 million in Series A funding. North Bridge Venture Partners led the investment, and is also housing the startup in its Waltham, MA, offices until it finds Boston-area office space. Egan-Managed Capital and Long River Ventures also kicked in cash, which will go to hiring more engineers and other staff, and development of a platform for smartphones.

—New Haven, CT-based antibiotics developer Rib-X Pharmaceuticals pulled in $5.5 million of a round of debt and options that could reach $15 million, an SEC filing showed. The company took in a new CEO in March and has raised more than $158 million before the newest funding, since its founding in 2000.

—Exogenesis, a Billerica, MA-based developer of technology for improving implantable medical devices’ interaction with the body, raised $3.7 million of a planned $4.1 million round of equity funding. The company lists members of Inflection Point Ventures and Venture Capital Fund of New England as members of the board, according to a regulatory filing.

—Sonicbids, whose website enables bands to discover and book gigs, said it acquired San Francisco-based ArtistData. No financial terms were disclosed for the deal, but Boston-based Sonicbids says that ArtistData, which serves as a platform for publishing gig information, will be … Next Page »

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Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, the New Haven, CT-based developer of antibiotics, has raised another $5.5 million in debt and options, according to a regulatory filing. The deal could be worth as much as $15 million over time. We last wrote about Rib-X in March, when Mark Leuchtenberger replaced Susan Froshauer as the company’s CEO. Rib-X, founded in 2000, had raised more than $158 million before the most recent shot of cash.

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Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals is coming back to work with a bang after the holiday weekend. The Watertown, MA-based company has raised $45 million in a Series C venture round to support a trio of new antibiotics that are designed to be tougher for bugs to resist.

A new investor, Excel Venture Management, is leading the deal. Tetraphase’s existing backers also ponied up again—CMEA Ventures, Fidelity Biosciences, Flagship Ventures, Mediphase Venture Partners, and Skyline Ventures. The antibiotic developer, founded in 2006, has now raised a total of $80 million since it got started. The new shot of cash ought to last two to two and a half years, CEO Guy Macdonald says.

The big idea at Tetraphase, which has its roots at Harvard University, is to custom-synthesize a new breed of tetracycline antibiotics with properties that couldn’t be created with conventional fermentation methods. Tetraphase has used its new technique to synthesize antibiotics that can kill a broad variety of bugs from the two major classes of bacteria (gram positive and gram negative), or more narrowly focused and potent drugs to kill specific bugs.

Doctors need new tools like these, partly because they’ve overused the workhorse antibiotics they’ve relied on for decades. Because of antibiotic overuse, health officials are becoming increasingly fearful that many pathogens are developing resistance to multiple drugs. More than 70 percent of bacterial infections acquired in hospitals are resistant to one or more classes of antibacterial drugs. Hard data is hard to come by, since hospitals often don’t fully disclose it, but an estimated 90,000 people in the U.S. die every year from infections they get in the hospital, and treating these infections costs about $4.5 billion, according to a 2006 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Guy Macdonald

All this activity has created an opening for Tetraphase, and a number of venture-backed companies like it.

“We’re very pleased to get this deal done, especially in this financing environment,” Macdonald says. “It now allows us the freedom to execute and show what we can do.”

Tetraphase, like its name suggests, is working to improve on tetracycline antibiotics, which have been powerful weapons against infectious disease for decades. The fermentation-based process typically used to create those products doesn’t give drug developers many opportunities to modify the antibiotics’ molecular structure, and so it essentially doesn’t leave them much room to engineer in new properties, Macdonald says. The Tetraphase technology, which relies on chemistry, rather than fermentation, is supposed to offer much more leeway to alter the molecule anywhere along its backbone.

One of the things that appeals to Macdonald—and surely to the VCs as well—is that such a technology can generate answers very quickly. Tetraphase cooks up about 20 new chemical structures every week, and runs them through bacterial cultures in two or three days to get a sense of how broadly effective, and how potent, they are.

Using this engine for antibiotic discovery, Tetraphase has picked three candidates for its clinical trial pipeline. The lead product, TP-434, is designed to work against a broad spectrum of bacterial infections, and is meant to be useful for physicians trying to fight an infection they haven’t yet been able to precisely diagnose, Macdonald says. Tetraphase is particularly keen on showing … Next Page »

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This week saw new leadership at a couple of New England’s life sciences companies, some wisdom from one of its newly public companies, and a new truce in one of its long-running power struggles.

—Luke tracked down close to 200 alumni of legendary Boston-area biotech firm Genetics Institute, which was acquired in 1996 by Wyeth. The (still-growing) list includes many of the leaders of Boston’s current crop of biotechs, including Tuan Ha-Ngoc of Aveo Pharmaceuticals, Adelene Perkins of Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and John Knopf of Acceleron Pharma.

—Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) staved off a proxy battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn with a deal that gives a board seat to Eric Rowinsky, one of the people Icahn nominated for Biogen’s board back in January. For his part, Icahn has agreed to back Biogen’s slate of candidates for open board seats at the company’s upcoming annual meeting, and to drop any plans to wage a proxy battle with the company this year.

—Luke checked in with Mark Leuchtenberger on his first day as CEO of New Haven, CT-based antibiotic developer Rib-X Pharmaceuticals. Gearing up to shepherd Rib-X’s lead candidate through the final phase of clinical testing and onto the market, Leuchtenberger was candid about what he learned from the failure of his last firm, Cambridge, MA-based Targanta Therapeutics, to reach that same goal.

—Peter Hecht, CEO of the newly public Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IRWD), talked to Ryan about how he pulled off one of the few biotech IPOs since the economic downturn. Having longstanding ties to institutional investors and a potential blockbuster drug in late-stage clinical trials helped the Cambridge-based firm raise $203 million last month and become one of the few biotechs in Massachusetts worth more than $1 billion.

—Cambridge-based Epizyme, a startup out to create new cancer drugs drawing on the field of epigenetics, recruited a new CEO from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Robert Gould, who took up the post just this week, replaces Epizyme’s founding CEO Kazumi Shiosaki, a managing director at MPM Capital, one of the investors who have put a total of $54 million into the startup.

—Diagnostics maker IntelligentMDx of Cambridge got a green light from the FDA to market its test for the H1N1 virus on an emergency basis. The approval will expire on April 26 of this year.

—The FDA had less happy news for Cambridge biotech giant Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ), whose Allston Landing manufacturing plant was the site of a viral contamination discovered last June. The agency said it will be reviewing operations at the plant for “an extended period” and may require to the company to make payments to the government.

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The CEO of a Boston biotech company that crashed a little more than a year ago is getting a second chance in the antibiotic business.

Mark Leuchtenberger, 53, the former CEO of Cambridge, MA-based Targanta Therapeutics, has been hired as president, CEO, and a member of the board at New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals. The founder and CEO of Rib-X for the past decade, Susan Froshauer, is retaining the title of chief scientific officer. But her new role isn’t entirely clear, from the information I could gather. When I asked if she will work full-time, Leuchtenberger wouldn’t comment, other than to say there are still “a variety of options” being discussed about Froshauer’s role.

Rib-X (pronounced RYE-bex) will be the next antibiotic developer that Leuchtenberger will seek to transform into a commercial entity with products for sale on the market. That didn’t happen for Targanta. He took that company public in 2007 at a valuation of $210 million, but the firm stumbled a year later when the FDA shot down its application to market a new antibiotic, saying it needed new clinical trials. Targanta went through a mass layoff, and was acquired in January 2009 by The Medicines Company for $42 million, plus potential milestones if the antibiotic ever wins FDA approval.

Leuchtenberger’s new company will certainly want to learn from those hard knocks, as it prepares to enter the final phase of clinical trials and considers whether to test the IPO waters. Rib-X has raised $158 million since its founding in 2000, and has gotten to the point where it’s ready to find a Big Pharma partner to help run an ambitious 800-patient clinical trial of its lead antibiotic candidate, delafloxacin, Froshauer said in a story published last month. Rib-X also has another drug candidate, radezolid, poised for pivotal studies.

Mark Leuchtenberger

“I’m a product guy first and foremost, and as I looked at these two products I don’t think there’s an antibiotic portfolio out there that can touch it,” Leuchtenberger says.

New England biotechies know Leuchtenberger’s name quite well. Before Targanta, he was president and CEO of Therion Biologics, a cancer immunotherapy company that raised $120 million, but, like Targanta, never got across the FDA finish line with an approved drug. Earlier in his career, Leuchtenberger was a senior officer with Biogen Idec, serving as a vice president of the company’s international business. He’s currently chairman of the board at MassBio, and a director of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Wake Forest University.

Rib-X has been around a long time because of the promise of its unusual scientific approach to developing antibiotics, which I wrote about last month. The vision is to use emerging technology to get high-resolution crystal structures of components called ribosomes in bacterial cells. This is important because many different classes of antibiotics work by binding with the ribosomes. So by getting precise images, and using a proprietary computational system, Rib-X seeks to identify points where the bacteria’s ribosomes are vulnerable, and where resistance can emerge.

Biotech, of course, is a small world, and that’s how Leuchtenberger got introduced to Rib-X. The company’s executive chairman, George Milne, is a venture partner with Radius Ventures in New York, which previously invested in Targanta.

How will Leuchtenberger handle the 2-hour car or train commute … Next Page »

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Despite the Presidents Day holiday, it’s been a big life sciences week for us.

—A new venture fund is being assembled by the founders of Cambridge, MA-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a developer of treatments for aging-related diseases that went to GlaxoSmithKline for more than $700 million in 2008. Christoph Westphal, Michelle Dipp, and Rich Aldrich have pulled in $50.7 million from 24 undisclosed investors for their Longwood Founders Fund, according to an SEC filing.

—Helicos Biosciences (NASDAQ:HLCS) president Steve Lombardi has resigned, the Cambridge-based company disclosed in a regulatory filing last Friday. Lombardi officially concluded his full-time work and his role on the Helicos board on February 11, but will continue to earn his salary through August. Helicos, which makes genetic analysis instruments, didn’t disclose the reasons for Lombardi’s departure, but said it wasn’t due to a conflict with company policies.

—Luke caught up with the CEO of Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, a New Haven, CT-based antibiotic developer that’s raised $35 million in the last year. The company is hoping to get help from a Big Pharma company on a trial for its top drug candidate, which should lead to an application with the FDA to market the drug in 2012, if all goes well.

—Ryan looked at the bumpy ride experienced by Lantheus Medical Imaging, a North Billerica company once owned by Bristol-Myers Squibb. The firm’s big focus is on new products like its contrast agent for diagnosing cardiovascular diseases, but it struggles to gain the name recognition that its previous owner had.

—Cambridge-based social networking site PatientsLikeMe announced that it acquired ReliefInsite, an online pain management firm that helps patients track their pain levels and share them with doctors. The move comes just after PatientsLikeMe’s West Coast rival, Keas, brokered a deal with Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) to expand the use of its health-monitoring software.

—The Carl Icahn story continues. The big biotech investor known for gobbling up shares at companies such as Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) and Amilyn Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AMLN) has taken a bigger stake in Cambridge’s Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ), increasing his holdings from 1.5 million shares in fourth quarter of 2009 to 4.6 million shares earlier this month.

—Eleven Biotherapeutics roared out of stealth mode with a $35 million Series A round, Luke reported. The Cambridge company, which looks to engineer protein treatments for blood clot disorders and autoimmune diseases, also has assembled a team of big names from the biotech and venture worlds.

—Providence, RI-based NABsys nabbed $7 million in Series B funding led by Stata Venture Partners, run by Analog Devices co-founder and chairman Ray Stata.  NABsys, whose DNA sequencing technology hinges on semiconductor innovations, will use the funding from Stata to develop a platform intended to streamline the reading of DNA chains.

—Ryan wrote about healthcare software provider Sentillion’s entry into the big leagues with its acquisition by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Few aspects of Andover, MA-based Sentillion’s business have changed since the access management software company became part of Microsoft’s health and life sciences unit, says CEO Robert Seliger, who will stay on as a general manager.

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Ten years have gone by since Susan Froshauer co-founded Rib-X Pharmaceuticals to create effective new antibiotics. If things break right, this will be the year her company makes some critical decisions that could ensure it lasts 10 more.

Like a lot of startup drug companies, this one is consuming a lot of time and money. The New Haven, CT-based firm raised $35 million over the past year, bringing its total financing to $158 million since its founding in 2000. Much of that cash is being set aside to test Rib-X’s lead candidate, delafloxacin, in a study of 800 patients with antibiotic-resistant infections they picked up in the hospital. If Rib-X can get help from a Big Pharma partner to start that trial on schedule this year, and it pans out, then the startup should be able to file an application to market the drug with the FDA in 2012, Froshauer says.

Rib-X’s antibiotic passed a mid-stage study of 150 patients in January 2009. The drug was well-tolerated, and helped more than 90 percent of patients become clinically cured of complex skin infections, even when more than half had dangerous and hard-to-treat MRSA infections. The treatment showed comparable effectiveness when stacked up against Pfizer’s tigecycline (Tygacil). If Rib-X can match that result in the pivotal study being planned, it could offer a new option for doctors in the constant battle against bacterial resistance. It could also be a first step for Rib-X’s transition from an R&D operation into something bigger and enduring.

“By partnering the delafloxacin asset, we’d be in a situation to continue to grow the program, and over time will allow us to have an antibiotic company,” Froshauer says.

Rib-X has been around as long as it has because of the promise of its unusual scientific approach to developing antibiotics. The vision was to use emerging technology to get high-resolution crystal structures of structures called ribosomes in bacterial cells. This is important because many different classes of antibiotics work by binding with the ribosomes. So by getting precise images, and using a proprietary computational system, Rib-X seeks to identify points where the bacteria are vulnerable, and where resistance can emerge.

While the underlying science is getting a taste of validation from clinical trials, that’s not the end goal for Rib-X as a business, Froshauer says. Other firms that have achieved some clinical validation have capitalized on that in subsequent acquisitions—San Diego-based Calixa Therapeutics, for instance, sold out last year to Lexington, MA-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals for … Next Page »

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Thomas Steitz, a Yale University chemist and co-founder of New Haven, CT-based Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, has won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry along with two other researchers for their use of X-ray crystallography to map the structure of ribosomes, according to the company. Rib-X says it has applied Steitz’s research in this area and computer modeling to design drugs to treat antibiotic-resistant infections. Steitz heads the scientific advisory board at Rib-X. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a UK-based scientist who is sharing the Nobel Prize with Steitz, is also one of Rib-X’s scientific advisors.

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This week we had the usual mix of news on partnerships, clinical trials, and the like, as well as some fascinating in-depth discussions with key players in the life sciences arena.

—Antibiotic developer Rib-X Pharmaceuticals announced that the oral form its experimental antibiotic radezolid passed a mid-stage clinical trial as a treatment for a common form of pneumonia. The New Haven, CT, firm is looking to partner with a pharmaceutical company to help move the drug toward FDA approval.

—Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) of Cambridge, MA, won approval from European regulators to market plerixafor (Mozobil) for patients with lymphoma and multiple myeloma who need stem cell transplants. The drug helps boost the number of stem cells that can be collected from the blood for such transplant procedures.

—Altus Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALTU) of Waltham, MA, said it will need to raise more capital before the end of next month in order to continue its operations. In March, the firm reduced its staff and abandoned development of a cystic fibrosis treatment in order to focus on ALTU-238, a treatment for patients with growth hormone deficiency.

—Cambridge-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) joined forces with Vancouver’s Tekmira Pharmaceuticals (TSX:TKM) to come up with new drug-delivery particles to get RNA-interference drugs where they need to go in the body. Alnylam will fund the research and gets exclusive rights to the resultant discoveries.

—Anti-viral drug maker Idenix Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IDIX) priced a secondary public offering of 7.25 million shares at $3.14 each. The Cambridge-based firm expected to raise $21.2 million from the offer.

—Irish drug company Elan filed suit against its Cambridge-based partner, Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB), over Biogen’s objections to a deal with affiliates of health Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) that Elan announced last month. That deal focuses on … Next Page »

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