Two biotech startups have hauled in a combined $38 million in Series B funding, pledging to advance their programs in inflammation and skin disease.
New Haven, CT's Trevi Therapeutics closed a $25 million round led by top investor TPG Biotech, money it will use to get its anti-itching drug into pivotal studies. Trevi's lead candidate, Nalbuphine ER, is an oral extended-release opioid that performed well in a Phase I trial, the company said. Now, Trevi plans to roll the drug into pivotal trials in uremic pruritus and prurigo nodularis--two severe itching conditions--expecting top-line results in the second half of next year.
Separately, Pittsburgh biotech Complexa wrapped up a $13 million B round, cash that will support its early work on lead candidate CXA-10. The company is in the midst of a Phase I trial of an intravenous formulation of the drug, targeting patients with a form of acute kidney disease. Complexa is also moving toward an IND for an oral CXA-10 formulation, planning to study that on patients with chronic kidney disease.
For Trevi, TPG's latest cash infusion follows a $12.8 million investment in 2012, an affirmation of faith in Nalbuphine ER's potential, TPG Biotech Managing Director Eran Nadav said in a statement. The drug boasts a dual, agonist-antagonist mechanism of action on opioid receptors, Trevi said, a trait the company believes will prove to have a broad effect on itching.
As for Complexa, the company is developing a pipeline beyond CXA-10, including small-molecule treatments for other inflammatory and metabolic diseases. The biotech's platform technology harnesses the body's nitro-fatty acids, natural cell-signaling agents, to regulate inflammatory pathways, thereby promoting tissue repair, according to Complexa.
- read the Trevi statement
- here's Complexa's release