RDD Pharma Ltd. has raised $7.15 million in its first financing round from OrbiMed Advisors LLC. RDD Pharma, which is developing a drug delivery technology for the direct and controlled delivery of drugs to the anal canal, has drugs under development for the treatment of anal fissures and spinal cord injury related fecal incontinence.
RDD Pharma CEO Dr. Nir Barak founded the company in 2009 at the Ofakim Hi-Tech Ventures incubator, owned by Capital Point Ltd. (TASE:CPTP). The company's drug for the treatment spinal cord injury related fecal incontinence, which contracts the anal muscles, has been tested on healthy Israeli volunteers, and the company has met with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the protocols for further clinical trials.
RDD says that the FDA wants more animal trials to verify that the company's drug will not affect blood circulation, cause hypertension, or change the heartbeat. Afterwards, a safety and efficacy trial will be conducted, which the company says will be fairly limited in scope because of the small target population in the US - 17,500 patients a year suffer from spinal cord injury related fecal incontinence - and because the FDA is already familiar with the drug's active ingredients.
RDD Pharma's second drug for the treatment of anal fissures targets one million new cases a year in the US.
Barak told "Globes", "Very few companies are active in this niche. We're rushing forward at full speed on both our indications. OrbiMed is different from other investors we spoke with, which wanted us to first develop the quicker and less risky indication. OrbiMed understood that to build us correctly as a company, we should move forward on both indications, and they allocated the necessary money."
RDD Pharma's current investors are Capital Point and Germany's Corporate Finance Holding GmbH.
RDD Pharma is the second investment by OrbiMed Israel, which won the government tender for a dedicated biomed venture capital fund. The first investment was $4.3 million in ear diseases treatment company Otic Pharma Ltd.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 8, 2012
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