March 24, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Dublin-based Iterum Therapeutics Limited announced today a $40 million Series A financing round led by Frazier Healthcare Partners and joined by Canaan Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, and New Leaf Venture Partners.
The company will focus on a new antibiotic. It acquired the compound from an unidentified “top-tier multinational pharmaceutical company.”
“Iterum has identified a novel product that has demonstrated potent in-vitro activity versus a wide variety of gram-negative, gram-positive and anaerobic bacteria resistant to other antibiotics,” said Patrick Heron, managing general partner at Frazier Healthcare Partners, in a statement. “We are excited to partner with the Iterum team to build a leading pharmaceutical company. They have a proven track record of successfully developing and commercializing products across a wide variety of therapeutic areas around the globe and creating substantial value for investors.”
On Dec. 2, 2015, Iterum filed a Form D to announce the $47.49 equity financing. At that point it had financed itself with $23.79 million.
The company also indicated it has added four new board members. They are Brent Ahrens, a general partner at Canaan Partners, James Healy, general partner at Sofinnova Ventures, Patrick Heron, and Ron Hunt, managing director at New Leaf Venture Partners.
They are joining current chief executive officer Corey Fishman and Paul Edick, who is chairman of the board and a founding partner at 3G Advisors.
Fishman and the company’s chief scientific officer, Michael Dunne, were senior leaders at Durata Therapeutics . Durata developed Dalvance (dalbavancin), the first and only intravenous antibiotic for acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI). It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May 2014 and by the European Medicines Agency in 2015. In Oct. 2014, Actavis plc acquired the company for about $675 million.
Actavis acquired Allergan in Nov. 2014, and Allergan is currently merging with Pfizer , which is expected to close sometime this year.
Also rounding out the company’s executive leadership is Judith Matthews, chief financial officer. She was the vice president of Finance at Durata until the Actavis acquisition. From 2009 to 2012 she was head of financial planning and analysis at Bally Total Fitness.
Benjamin Pe is vice president of operations. From 2010 to 2015, he was with Durata for a variety of positions, including human resources, finance, commercial/sales operations, sales training, market research and business analytics.
Sailaja Puttagunta is the vice president of development, joining the company earlier this year. Prior to joining, she was vice president, medical affairs for anti-infectives at Allergan, and vice president of development and medical affairs at Durata.
And finally, John White is the vice president of business development and supply chain. He was previously vice president of business development and licensing for Durata until the acquisition. From 2013 to 2014, he ran the U.S. injectable marketing program for the Bristol-Myers Squibb /Astra Zeneca Diabetes Alliance.
“We are very proud to have assembled a world-class investor group to support development of our first novel anti-infective compound,” Fishman said in a statement. “Having successfully collaborated with each of the syndicate members in the past, we appreciate their confidence in our vision to once again build a company that can bring novel therapies to patients and physicians.”
