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"Needle-free" drug maker Zogenix files for $86M IPO -- Zogenix, a San Diego developer of "needle-free" drug-delivery systems, has become the latest drug startup willing to brave the headwinds of the IPO market. The company filed to raise $86.3 million in its offering, an oddly familiar figure. (For reasons we haven't yet had time to explore, quite a few biotech and device startups aim for the suspiciously precise goal of $86.25 million in their initial filings. Yes, the figure is something of a placeholder that's almost always modified once startups get around to establishing the size of their offerings and a price range, but still -- why $86.25 million?)

Zogenix is one of several drug developers hoping to finally commercialize technology that would make it possible to get drugs into the bloodstream without injections. A few others include Corium, which swallowed StrataGent; Zosano Pharma; and Glide Pharma. This sort of technology would be ideal for biotech drugs such as insulin, which consist of large proteins that would be broken down in the digestive system if taken in pill form. The only problem is that no one has managed to make such "transdermal" delivery actually work yet.

As it turns out, however, Zogenix has set its sights much lower. The company is a specialty pharma that, like so many others, is focused on selling retread drugs in a new form. In particular, the company plans to offer reformulated versions of sumatriptan, a migraine drug about to go generic, and the narcotic painkiller hydrocodone (the active ingredient in Vicodin), for needle-free delivery. Zogenix does eventually plan to explore the possibility of using its DosePro technology for biotech drugs. Oddly enough, though, it never explains exactly how DosePro is supposed to work, either on its Web site or in its SEC filing.

Zogenix has been operating at a loss since its founding in 2006 and has generated no revenue. It reported a $46 million net loss in 2007.