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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. 

Plug and Play Ventures (a successor fund to Amidzad Partners) is a private/family investment vehicle based in Silicon Valley, CA. The fund is a structured organization for making angel investments in pre-seed or seed rounds. Investments are in the form of equity; in the next 6 months Plug and Play Ventures expects to make about 5-10 seed investments of $50,000-100,000 and an additional 40 pre-seed investments of $25,000, and is hoping to increase their allocations in the healthcare sector. Plug and Play also provides a three-month accelerator program. The firm will consider investing in companies worldwide.

Plug and Play Ventures is interested in investing in medical technology, and invests in subsectors in which the firm can apply expertise; typically this means products that have a significant software component. Healthcare IT, biosensors, wearables and health monitoring devices are of interest. While the firm is open to investing in any indication, Plug and Play is particularly interested in diabetes & blood glucose monitoring, personal fitness, and mental/behavioral disorders. In the healthcare IT sector, Plug and Play Ventures is interested in both consumer applications and enterprise software, but is not interested in diagnostic software such as genomic, proteomic, or molecular diagnostic algorithms; however, optimization and data analysis software for hospitals and diagnostic laboratories is of interest.

Plug and Play Ventures (a successor fund to Amidzad Partners) is a private/family investment vehicle based in Silicon Valley, CA. The fund is a structured organization for making angel investments in pre-seed or seed rounds. Investments are in the form of equity; in the next 6 months Plug and Play Ventures expects to make about 5-10 seed investments of $50,000-100,000 and an additional 40 pre-seed investments of $25,000, and is hoping to increase their allocations in the healthcare sector. Plug and Play also provides a three-month accelerator program. The firm will consider investing in companies worldwide.  

Plug and Play Ventures is interested in investing in medical technology, and invests in subsectors in which the firm can apply expertise; typically this means products that have a significant software component. Healthcare IT, biosensors, wearables and health monitoring devices are of interest. While the firm is open to investing in any indication, Plug and Play is particularly interested in diabetes & blood glucose monitoring, personal fitness, and mental/behavioral disorders. In the healthcare IT sector, Plug and Play Ventures is interested in both consumer applications and enterprise software, but is not interested in diagnostic software such as genomic, proteomic, or molecular diagnostic algorithms; however, optimization and data analysis software for hospitals and diagnostic laboratories is of interest.

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.

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.

River Cities Capital Fund is a private equity firm founded in 1994 and based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The firm manages approximately $500 million under management and is currently investing out of its 2014 vintage $200 fund. The firm looks to make investments of $5-$15 million initially up to $20 million over the investments lifetime. The firm is willing to invest throughout the United States and is looking to make approximately 4-6 equity investments over the next 6 to 9 months.

RiverVest Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that was founded in 2000 and is based in St. Louis, Missouri with additional office in Cleveland, Ohio. The firm currently has managed over $208 million of total assets. RiverVest has raised two investment funds with total committed capital of $165 million since inception. The recent fund closed at $75 million. RiverVest typically makes equity investments into global companies, and has no specific geographic preferences. The firm will consider making investments at all the stages, and focuses on investments in seed, early-stage and select later-stage companies. The typical investment size is around $6 million, though the firm can invest more or less, depending on the opportunity. 

RiverVest is extremely opportunistic when it comes to investments in the life sciences space; with that being said RiverVests specified sectors and sub sectors of interest may or may not be an area in which RiverVest is currently looking to allocate capital to. The firm invests in companies in the biotech therapeutics and diagnostics, as well the medical technology space. 

Some of the firms investments have included companies developing biotech therapeutics and diagnostics targeting diseases of the blood and blood forming organs, neoplasms, cancer, and oncology, skin and subcutaneous tissue, cardiovascular diseases, diseases of the ear, and infectious diseases. The firm has also invested in companies developing anti-body based therapeutics. The firm has also invested in firms developing medical technologies such as therapeutic radiation devices, active implantable devices, non active implantable devices, hospital hardware, and imaging devices.