Search 

Pfizer Venture Investments (PVI) is the corporate venture capital arm of Pfizer and was founded in 2004. PVI has an annual investments budget of $50 million and invests up to $10M per investing round. The firm focuses mainly on U.S. startups but has global reach. PVI attempts to allocate 80% of its funding to U.S. based companies and utilizes the remaining 20% for international ventures. PVI provides equity funding for private companies in need of seed, growth, or venture financing. Remaining opportunistic, PVI focuses entirely on high growth prospects in all sectors and all phases of development. The ideal candidate has a potential for high growth and returns. Additionally, PVI will seek to in-license products and buyout companies if the opportunity arises.

Pharmatek is a contract development & manufacturing company providing dosage form development & cGMP manufacturing of oral, injectable & topical products. Founded in 1999, our services focus on the rapid advancement of small molecule & peptide drug candidates from the bench to the clinic & include:

·         Formulation & Analytical Development

·         cGMP Manufacturing

·         Clinical Packaging, Labeling & Worldwide Distribution

Our experience includes first-in-man strategies, solutions for poorly soluble compounds, controlled release formulations & separate facilities for the handling of cytotoxic & potent compounds.  Pharmatek’s drug delivery technologies include:

·         Solid Dispersions

·         Particle Size Reduction

·         Lipid Delivery

·         Complexation

·         Lyophilization

·         Suspensions & Emulsions

Pharmatek’s 68,000 sq. ft. facility includes 9 class 100,000 cGMP manufacturing suites, formulation & analytical laboratories, & ICH stability storage.  Pharmatek has over 150 clients globally, ranging from virtual to large pharmaceutical companies. Having manufactured product for clinical trials in the North America, Europe & Asia; Pharmatek has successfully completed several large pharma quality, EH&S & QP audits.

Phoenix PharmaLabs, Inc. (PPL) is a privately held, preclinical drug discovery company focused on the development and commercialization of new potent, non-addictive treatments for pain and new therapies for the treatment of opiate addiction.

PPL has developed a novel family of New Molecular Entities (NMEs) with high binding affinity at all three opiate receptors: mu, kappa and delta.  These unique ligands, derived from opioid backbones using proprietary technology, have high binding affinity at all three opioid receptors (mu, delta and kappa) and more balanced receptor activity than morphine and other opioids, with partial agonist / antagonist activity at mu, somewhat higher, but not full, kappa agonist activity, and moderate delta activity.  This profile results in first-ever opiate analgesics that appear to be non-addicting and free of all significant dangerous side effects. 

Studies of the drugs have been conducted by prominent scientists at leading institutions including Lou Harris and colleagues at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Jim Woods and colleagues at the University of Michigan, and Larry Toll and colleagues at SRI International and Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies.  Study results in rodents and monkeys performed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) / National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and SRI International Laboratories demonstrated the following:

• Robust analgesic potency (10-20x stronger than morphine)
• Little or no euphoric reward / abuse and addiction potential in rodents and monkeys (multiple studies)
• No dysphoria in rodents and monkeys (multiple studies)
• Only moderate signs of respiratory depression – even at 150x dosage
• No death from overdose - even at 350x dosage
• LD50 = 500x dosage
• No physical dependence in naive rodents
• No inhibition of GI transport - even at 350x dosage
• No Long QT syndrome risk – hERG assay
• No significant diuresis in rodents
• Does not precipitate withdrawal in dependent monkeys

Since the drugs do not precipitate withdrawal, they offer very promising use for addiction therapy as a preferred substitute for methadone and buprenorphine, as well as for pain. 

The drugs are orally active and inexpensive to manufacture using PPL's patented manufacturing process.  A key patent on the lead molecule for Composition, Methods and Use will be issued in the US by January, 2015, and it is currently being internationalized.

The cost and risk of achieving a New Drug Approval (NDA) from the FDA is substantially lower than other NMEs with equivalent market potential.  Few drug classes have more longitudinal testing data than opioids for use as a predictor of success in trials.  Therefore, the risk of pharmaceutical product development is significantly reduced compared to the risk of developing less understood and potentially problematic drug classes.  As described above, the assets have been effectively de-risked in animal studies covering all risks that typically manifest themselves in opioids.

Furthermore, a vast amount of opioid testing data is available concerning the transition of effects of pure opioid compounds from animals to humans.  Consequently, our scientific experts and advisors predict that the risk of problems in toxicology and safety pharmacology is very low.  The prediction correlation from animals to humans is very high, and thus there is a high level of confidence that the compounds will be safe, effective and beneficial for humans.   

Recently our drug family has also attracted attention for Animal Health applications, primarily due to the lack of respiratory depression and GI tract side effects as well as the likelihood that the drugs would likely be unscheduled (or at most scheduled as Class IV or V).

The strategic objective of our company is to enter into one or more license agreements with appropriate market leader(s) that have the resources and motivation to further develop, commercialize, and maximize the market potential of PPL’s family of drugs.  We are making steady progress towards the achievement of that objective. Following submission of a BAA grant proposal to the DoD, we were invited by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command (USAMRMC) to submit a full application for a $3.6 million grant for the advancement of our PPL-103 compound for pain, and we are currently awaiting the results. In the meantime we are exploring other potential funding opportunities and strategic collaborations. 

Precision NanoSystems Inc. (“PNI”) has developed proprietary technology (NanoAssemblr) and companion Reagent Kits (SUB9KITS) that enable the simple manufacture of novel nanoparticles that are used to delivery genetic and small molecule medicines (nanomedicines). Nanomedicines are the "FedEx" of the health-care industry and are used for cell-specific delivery of research tools, diagnostic imaging agents and drugs to study, diagnose and treat disease. PNI's products are commercialized and in high demand from many of leading RNA and small molecule therapeutic biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.  http://www.precisionnanosystems.com/products/

Prize4Life is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 in Cambridge, MA focused on accelerating therapy development for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease). Prize4Life uses incentive prizes to attract new minds and drive innovation in ALS drug development. The organization is running the $1M Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize4Life challenge for preclinical validation of a novel ALS therapeutic in an ALS mouse model, and submissions to this prize will be accepted until June 6th 2015. In addition to prizes, Prize4Life also runs infrastructure programs to support the ALS research community, such as the ALS FORUM, an online portal of cutting edge research and drug development news in ALS (www.researchals.org).

Prolog Ventures is a venture capital firm based out of St. Louis Missouri that was founded in 2001. The firm is currently making investments out of its vintage 2013 4th fund of approximately $100 million. The firm is looking to make equity investments in companies ranging from $500,000 to $3 million. The firm will invest in companies across the United States and plans to make approximately 3-4 investments over the next 6-9 months.

RECARDIO is a virtual, private, clinical stage life science company founded in 2011 focusing on drug based regenerative therapeutic modalities for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

The company started product development mid-stage by taking advantage of >$100m of previously invested capital in the licensed lead compound, Dutogliptin. Safety has been established in more than 1000 subjects and all non-clinical studies have been completed to the highest standards, including 2 year carcinogenicity, resulting in a de-risked clinical development program from the safety perspective and overall reduction in total program costs.

 After completion of limited preclinical studies clinical trials will commence in early 2015 in patients with acute myocardial infarction.

After establishing proof-of-principle in vivo and completion of the preclinical development, it has entered clinical stage and is developing multiple therapeutic leads as the future regenerative medication for patients with various cardiovascular diseases, with the potential of improving their cardiac function, quality of life and survival.

The Problem: Pharmaceutical development has traditionally focused on intense study of an explicit molecular target related to a specific disease of interest. This strategy is costly and inefficient.

The Solution: We have developed technology that can be scaled to quickly, precisely, reliably, and simultaneously model thousands of genetic diseases in human cells and evaluate the effect of thousands of individual drugs on those disease models. We've built a computational platform that recognizes structural changes in millions of diseased cells and then identifies drugs that return those diseased cells to a healthy state.

Proof of Concept: We have already used an early version of this platform to discover a potential treatment for one genetic disease. We have IP for this drug, and have already been approached about licensing.  We are scaling our platform now to enable us to achieve our goal of discovering and partnering to bring to market treatments for at least 100 genetic diseases in 10 years.