Tisbury Pharmaceuticals today announced that it had raised $32 million in its first financing round. The company, which is developing a drug for treatment of glaucoma, was founded by Professor Andrew Salzman. Investors in the company include the OrbiMed Advisors LLC fund, Clarus Healthcap, and Pontifax.
Tisbury, which has offices in Katzrin on the Golan Heights, has developed a drug that opens the drainage openings in the corner of the eye and substantially reduces intraocular pressure among glaucoma sufferers. Salzman based his development on research by the University of Tennessee Professor Monica Jablonski , who specializes in the use of nano-particles in drug delivery. Tisbury is currently conducting animal trials. The money raised will be used for human trials and developing other glaucoma drugs.
Salzman is known to the biomed market in Israel as the founder of Inotek Pharmaceuticals, founded in Israel and now listed on Nasdaq. He says, "After resigning from Inotek, I founded a company named Radikal Therapeutics in Massachusetts. Some of the team came from Inotek, and wanted to continue in the same field. We developed an entire platform of drugs capable of affecting intraocular pressure. Meanwhile, we saw the effect of the drug on animals and eyes taken from people after their death. One of the products matured, and we put it into a spinoff - Tisbury." In addition to eye drugs, the company is also developing drugs for pulmonary hypertension, pancreatic inflammation, and others.
Salzman says that Radikal has raised no capital since it was founded in 2009; it has been financed with $109 million in grants that did not dilute its shareholders and revenue from service agreements.
"In addition to Radikal, I also founded Salzman Capital Ventures. Among other things, this fund has a 100-square-meter laboratory in the Golan Heights that employs 40 scientists conducting research for various companies, basic research, and applied research. The laboratory opened a year ago. We are conducting our own research there, financed by activity for other companies. The two companies are managed by Nedira Salzman-Frenkel, my daughter, and I am the chairman. We immigrated to Israel officially in 2008. My wife, Batsheva, is originally from Dimona.
"According to the division between the companies, Salzman Capital conducts the riskier and more basic research, sometimes with no commercial objectives at all, and the work for other commercial concerns, and we also offer learning and training services in drug development. At the beginning, it was difficult to bring scientists to the Golan Heights, but when they realized what was involved, it became easy.
"Such a venture could not be accomplished with other investors, so Radikal is completely owned by me and my family, and so is Salzman Capital. When the product becomes commercial, however, like now, we can raise outside money, as we have done now with Tisbury."
Tisbury CEO Dr. Gary Sternberg said today, "We're proud to close a financing round with participation by top-tier investors, and we're committed to developing an innovative drug for treating a serious disease that causes blindness in millions of people worldwide."
OrbiMed senior managing director Dr. Nissim Darvish said, "The drug that Salzman has developed has significant potential for treating glaucoma. It has a unique mechanism that differs from the drugs currently in the market. The company's technology is special, and its team of managers and consultants is among the world leaders in developing drugs for eye diseases."
Tisbury is OrbiMed's second investment in two weeks. Both cases involve relatively large investments in young companies developing groundbreaking drugs. It appears that OrbiMed believes that a substantial investment at this early stage can give Israeli companies a springboard for competing against their counterparts in the rest of the world.
Salzman founded Israeli-US company Inotek in 1996. It developed drugs for a variety of uses, such as cancer, heart disease, and infectious diseases. Inotek was one of several companies that arose in Israel in the 1990s seeking to establish themselves as independent biotech companies responsible for the entire value chain, including production (other such companies were InterPharm and BTG).
Like Tisbury, Inotek was also financed for years from grants, and only raised venture capital in 2004. Inotek raised $35 million in its second financing round in 2005, led by Darwish, with participation from both foreign funds and Israeli fund Pitango Venture Capital. Inotek had a branch in Massachusetts and a branch in Ra'anana, at which its trials were conducted. In 2005, it acquired a production facility in Dimona that previously belonged to D-Pharm Ltd. (TASE: DPRM). At its peak, the company had dozens of employees in Dimona.
The company signed a development agreement with Genentech in 2006 with a potential value of up to $625 million, but when the agreement was canceled in 2008, Inotek laid off all its employees in Israel and closed down the plant (and sold it to Rotem Industries), and Salzman left the company around that time. Inotek continued to develop, with a focus on glaucoma (like Tisbury). The company held an IPO in 2015 on the basis of its ophthalmology drugs, raising $60 million. Its current market cap is $45 million.
"Globes": What happened to Inotek after you left?
Salzman: "The Nasdaq IPO was unspectacular. The product was successful in Phase II trials, but not in Phase III trials. Inotek is being merged with another company with an existing product in Phase III trials that is likely to fit in with our product. So we hope to see the share price go back up again."
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on June 7, 2017
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