Israel’s biomedical firm D-Pharm Ltd announced the successful completion of fundraising via a public rights issue, of 12.8 million NIS ($3.2 million) in aggregate. D-Pharm’s largest shareholder, CLAL Biotechnology (CBI), exercised all its rights to the tune of 8.7M NIS ($2.1 million) and a third of the total funds raised were from the public.
D-Pharm is a clinical-stage neuroscience company focused on the development of pioneering proprietary drugs for the treatment of central nervous system disorders. Its pipeline includes three products in the Phase 2 clinical stage of development; namely, THR-18 for safe thrombolysis, DP-b99 for acute pancreatitis, and DP-VPA for epilepsy, as well as a preclinical development pipeline for misfolded protein disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, and other types of dementia.
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The company states that THR-18 aims to improve the safety profile of tPA and allow the only approved, desperately needed, therapy to reach the majority of stroke patients. Late last year, D-Pharm reported on a successful Phase 2a study of THR-18 in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients treated with the clot-busting thrombolytic drug tPA. In that study THR-18 significantly (p<0.05) decreased the number of patients with brain swelling (edema) and intracranial hemorrhage (ICH).
D-Pharm’s VP Clinical Development, Gilad Rosenberg commented, “It’s particularly encouraging that the reduced rate of edema seen in THR-18 treated patients is associated with almost double the number of patients without disability 30 days after AIS.”
D-Pharm’s CEO, Dr. Alex Kozak, added, “I’m very happy with this strong support from our shareholders. We are fully committed to development of our clinical-stage pipeline with THR-18 as our top priority. This drug stands to make a real impact on the number of stroke patients that will receive safe thrombolytic therapy. Successful completion of the fundraising will help prepare THR-18 for the coming critical stage of development through regulatory submissions for the next large-scale clinical study.”
THR-18 in a new chemical entity, small synthetic peptide, related to a fragment of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1), a natural inhibitor of tPA activity. THR-18 uncouples the clot-dissolving properties of tPA from its deleterious non-fibrinolytic effects on the blood vessel wall, including intracranial hemorrhage and brain edema, and leaves tPA’s catalytic activity intact.
