Roxro Pharma raises $43M for pain drugs
Roxro Pharmaceuticals, a Menlo Park, Calif., specialty pharmaceutical company focused on pain drugs, raised $42.7 million in a second funding round. The company’s release is here (PDF).
Founded in 1999, Roxro acquires discarded or failed drugs from other companies and pushes them through clinical development. Although I keep thinking the bloom has come off this particular trend, investors apparently can’t get enough of the strategy, at least to judge by this sizable round. The company’s lead candidate is ROX-888, a painkiller designed to be taken via an intranasal spray, which is currently in late-stage trials. The company plans to file for FDA approval of the drug in the first half of next year.
The round was led by Prospect Venture Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures, joined by Thomas Weisel Healthcare Venture Partners.
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About the Author, David P. Hamilton
David Hamilton has been writing for VentureBeat LifeScience since April 2007. He formerly spent 14 years as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in its San Francisco and Tokyo bureaus. Prior to that, he spent several years as a reporter at Science Magazine and as a reporter/researcher for the New Republic, both in Washington.
