Israeli startup Vidac Pharma has closed a $9 million a Series A financing round. The financing was led by a new investor, Israel Biotech Fund. Existing investors, including Mivtach Shamir Holdings, also participated in the financing. Dr. Robert Spiegel and Mr. Ed Saltzman, members of Israel Biotech Fund’s Venture Advisory team, will join Vidac’s board of directors.
Based in Jerusalem, Vidac Pharma is a privately-held clinical stage pharmaceutical company developing novel small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and oncodermatology disease.
Vidac Pharma plans to use the proceeds to advance the development of its lead product, VDA-1102 ointment, which is in Phase II clinical trial in patients with actinic keratosis. Actinic keratosis (AK) is one of the most common dermatological conditions worldwide effecting 58 million people in the US alone with estimated treatment costs in 2004 of $1.2 billion.
Vidac Pharma president and CEO Oren Becker said, “This financing will allow us to advance the clinical development of our lead candidate VDA-1102 as well as progress our pipeline of novel therapeutics into clinical development. We are thrilled by the strong support from our existing investors, and by the addition of Israel Biotech Fund and its new board members who are highly experienced in guiding drugs through clinical development and regulatory approval to commercial success.”
Vidac Pharma is dedicated to discovering and developing first-in-class medicines to help people suffering from a range of oncologic and onco-dermatologic diseases. Vidac’s breakthrough technology targets the cancer-specific VDAC/HK2 system without affecting the surrounding healthy tissue. It thus holds the promise of delivering novel drugs that are both efficacious and well tolerated by patients.
Vidac Pharma chairman and founder and VDA-1102 inventor Prof. Max Herzberg said, “The new financing will allow Vidac Pharma to realize its vision of turning breakthrough science in the field of mitochondria and cancer metabolism into first-in-class therapies that help millions of patients suffering from cancer and related diseases."
“We invested in Vidac because we were impressed by the pre-clinical results of the lead compound and management’s ability to build an important company in the field of oncology and oncodermatology,” said David Sidransky, M.D., co-founder & general partner at Israel Biotech Fund. “This investment is in line with our strategy of investing in leading drug discovery and development companies in Israel.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 29, 2016
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