Biotech Startup Indalo Therapeutics Nabs $9M
August 3, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
St. Louis, MO – Indalo Therapeutics announced it has raised $9 million of a $26 million equity round.
The company was founded in October 2016 from the merger of Antegrin Therapeutics and Cascadia Therapeutics. Indalo combined Antegrin’s portfolio of small-molecule integrin antagonists and Cascadia’s expertise in drug development. Cascadia’s co-founders were Williamson Bradford and Scott Seiwert, who were both executives at InterMune , where they were major players in developing pirfenidone (Esbriet) for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The company sold to Roche in 2014.
Indalo was provided funding report from BioGenerator, Missouri Technology Corporation, iSelect Fund, and other investors.
The company’s chief executive is George Capps. Bradford is the company’s chief medical officer. Seiwert is the company’s chief scientific officer. Ramachandran Radhakrishnan is the senior vice president of Pharmaceutical Development.
Indalo’s lead program is focused on developing therapies for fibrotic diseases, more specifically an oral treatment for solid organ fibrosis. This covers a lot of progressive and debilitating conditions, although the company is not specifying exactly which ones it is working on, although it appears to be pulmonary fibrosis. All the work so far is in the preclinical stages. A 2016 paper published by Capps in the journal Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology focuses on pancreatic fibrosis in mice.
The company has indicated it hopes to “initiate IND-enabling activities in 2017 and to commence its first human study in early 2019.”
“The creation of Indalo from the merger of Antegrin and Cascadia results in a leading biotechnology company poised to tackle some of the jmost compmlex challenges in fibrosis,” said Rajesh Devraj, Indalo’s chairman of the board, in a statement in 2016. “Indalo is built on cutting-edge scientific innovation, diverse intellectual property estates, and a stellar executive team with deep knowledge of anti-fibrotic drug development.”
The funding achieved so far, according to its form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), accounts for 34.62 percent of its offer. The company didn’t specify what it planned to use the funds for, although advancing its work into the clinic is a likely focus. The WeeklyRegister notes, “On average, startups in the Pharmaceuticals sector, sell 60.90 percent of the total offering size. Indalo Therapeutics sold 34.62 percent of the offering. The financing is still open. The average fundraising size for companies in the Pharmaceuticals industry is $556,000. The total amount raised is 1,518.70 percent bigger than the average for companies in the Pharmaceuticals sector.”
“Fibrotic diseases represent an enormous unmet medical need, with patients desperate for new therapies,” Bradford said in a 2016 statement. “Dr. Seiwert and I are eager to apply our complementary expertise in the fibrotic disease space to expeditiously advance Indalo’s lead programs into the clinic.”