Israeli gastro-intestinal drug development company RDD Pharma has raised $9.5 million in a Series B financing round. The round included $6 million from two new investors, Pharmascience, Inc. and an international life science fund, as well as existing investors OrbiMed and Capital Point.
The new funding will be used to advance programs in anal fissure, fecal incontinence, radiation colitis/proctitis and pruritus ani.
RDD Pharma was founded in 2009 by former CEO Dr. Nir Barak at the Ofakim Hi-Tech Ventures incubator, owned by Capital Point. The company has offices in Tel Aviv and New York.
RDD Pharma CEO Jason Laufer said, "We are pleased to have two new investor groups join OrbiMed and our other investors to further fund clinical studies of products with large unmet needs in anorectal disease."
RDD Pharma has been moving forward on two products into clinical trials in the past few years: RDD-1219 is currently in a Phase III registration trial in Europe for treatment of chronic anal fissure; RDD-0315 for fecal incontinence has completed a Phase IIa trial in patients with spinal cord injury. Based on these results, RDD was been awarded a US Department of Defense grant to advance the spinal cord injury program. In June of this year, the European Medicines Agency granted Orphan Status to this program.
RDD Pharma has also licensed the Canadian rights to its anal fissure product to Pendopharm, a division of Pharmascience Inc.
Two pre-clinical assets are also in development for pruritis ani and radiation colitis/proctitis.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 17, 2017
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