Life sciences briefing: Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008

February 20, 2008 | David P. Hamilton

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

ocera-logo-150px.gifSan Diego’s Ocera raises $36M for gastrointestinal treatments –Ocera Therapeutics, a San Diego specialty pharma working on treatments for Crohn’s disease and other gastrointestinal complaints, raised $35.5 million in a third funding round. Investors included Montagu Newhall Associates, InterWest Partners, AgeChem Venture Fund, Cross Creek, FinTech, CDIB BioScience, Domain Associates, Sofinnova Ventures, and Thomas McNerney & Partners.

Ocera, founded in 2005, licenses existing drugs from overseas pharmaceutical companies and runs them through clinical trials to win approval in the U.S. and other areas. Its lead candidate, AST-120, is currently marketed in Japan and Korea for the treatment of chronic kidney disease. Ocera, which acquired U.S. and European rights to the drug from Japan’s Kureha, is currently conducting late-stage, phase III trials of the drug in fistulizing Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune condition that can lead to the formation of channels called fistula that can run from the bowels to the skin and other organs.

AST-120 is composed of spherical carbon designed to absorb acids, toxins and other compounds thought to play a role in various diseases. Ocera is also testing the drug as a potential treatment for pouchitis, an inflammation of the small intestine in people who have undergone removal of some or all of the large intestine; irritable bowel syndrome; inflammatory liver enlargement; and drug-resistant gastrointestinal reflux disease. The company has now raised a total of $62 million in venture investment.

Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , ,

Photo of David P. Hamilton

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.

  • tomstew
    Hey David,

    My names Tom Stewart the founder of Crohn's and Colitis Community

    I have Crohn's myself so I understand to some extent the daily problems people can and do face.

    The goal of the site is to act as one massive community driven blog with as many authors as possible all speaking about their specific experiences with IBD. Crohn’s, Colitis and all other IBD related problems are mainly anti-social in their very nature. So whats better than trying to combat these issues by starting up a new community driven website where people will be able to contact each other and discusses the problems only people with IBD disease can really understand.

    What I'm trying to do with Crohn's and Colitis Community is get people to come and blog on their experiences with Crohn's and Colitis. OurCrohns.com has been designed to help people communicate with other people in simlar situations, and to allow people to tell their personal stories.

    But for all of this to happen we need people to join the blogging team!

    User accounts will be set-up by myself upon request and I’ll personally show people how to use wordpress to publish articles to the website. If you would like to contact me directly then please use the contact form on our contact page, which can be found at www.ourchrons.com/contact