Cempra Pharmaceuticals - Top 20 Biotech VC Deals of 2009

Company: Cempra Pharmaceuticals
Based: Chapel Hill, NC
Amount: $47.75 million

Investors: Quaker BioVentures, Devon Park Bioventures, Aisling Capital, Intersouth Partners, investment banker Wistar Morris III and Teachers' Private Capital

Scoop: Last May, North Carolina-based Cempra Pharmaceuticals raised $46 million in a third round of financing. The company is developing two antibiotics for multi-drug resistant bacterial infections.

Cempra announced in January that it had completed enrollment of the Phase II portion of its Phase II/III clinical trial of Taksta (sodium fusidate; CEM-102) for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections. Around the same time, it appointed Donald Olsen as EVP of business development. Olsen will oversee the business development and partnering activities for the company's two clinical-stage anti-infective programs, as well as the its preclinical inflammation and gastrointestinal programs that have emerged from its macrolide library.

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