Ambit Biosciences Completes $18.8 Million Series B Financing
San Diego, CA - Ambit Biosciences Corporation, a privately held drug discovery and development company, completed its series B round of financing, raising $18.8 million. The investor group was led by Forward Ventures and the Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund LP and included, Avalon Ventures, GIMV NV and Baker-Tisch Investments. This latest round of financing follows a $2 million seed round completed in December 2000. The capital raised will be used to further develop and commercialize ProteomeScanT, the Company's proprietary chemistry-directed discovery platform.
"We have assembled an outstanding team, including a prestigious and seasoned group of investors," commented M. Scott Salka, the Company's Chief Executive Officer. "Our unique approach to drug discovery generates drug targets that are both novel and commercially proven. This paradox actually points to the initial opportunity we aim to exploit with our technology. By taking advantage of the multitude of small molecule drugs that exert their therapeutic effects through undefined mechanisms, we intend to discover and patent their protein targets. Having these commercially and therapeutically validated targets in hand will give Ambit and our partners the ability to develop compounds with greatly improved odds of clinical success."
Ambit Biosciences's high-throughput, chemistry-directed discovery technology eliminates the difficult and resource-draining target validation and 'drugability' steps that slow conventional genomics- and proteomics-based drug discovery efforts. This is accomplished by directly screening, in a parallel, efficient and highly scalable manner, tens of thousands of human proteins for their ability to bind biologically active small molecules, peptides or proteins.
"The commercial potential of Ambit's technology was clear to me from the very beginning," said Kevin J. Kinsella, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ambit Biosciences, "and it is gratifying to see that others share my view. Although we maintained a low profile for the past year, Ambit now has several programs underway with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to discover the protein targets of biologically active small molecules, peptides and proteins. We expect to announce some of these relationships in the near future."
The Company was co-founded by Kevin J. Kinsella, Chairman, Board of Directors, David J. Austin, Ph.D., Chairman, Scientific Advisory Board, and David J. Lockhart, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer.. Ambit Biosciences is commercializing technology initially developed in Dr. Austin's laboratory in the Chemistry Department at Yale University and since improved upon by the Company. This technology is exclusively licensed by Ambit Biosciences from Yale University and is the subject of pending U.S. and international patent applications.
Management
Kevin J. Kinsella, Co-Founder and Chairman: Mr. Kinsella has been a principal investor in the Company since its inception in May 2000. Mr. Kinsella has been in the venture capital industry since 1981 when he founded Avalon Ventures. Mr. Kinsella has been instrumental in the formation, financing and development of more than 50 early stage companies.
M. Scott Salka, Chief Executive Officer and Director: Prior to joining Ambit, Mr. Salka served as the Chief Executive Officer of Arcaris, a privately held genomics company that was acquired by Deltagen in July 2001. Mr. Salka was also a co-founder and the Chief Financial Officer of one of the first commercial genomics companies, Sequana Therapeutics, which was acquired in 1998.
David J. Lockhart, Ph.D., Co-Founder, President, Chief Scientific Officer and Director: Prior to co-founding Ambit, Dr. Lockhart was the Director of Genomics at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. Dr. Lockhart is a world-renowned expert in the field of genomics and the application of high-density DNA arrays for cellular and genetics studies. Dr. Lockhart was an inventor and developer of oligonucleotide arrays for highly parallel gene expression monitoring at Affymetrix. He has published numerous articles focused on genomics, DNA array technology and the application of genomics tools in research and drug discovery.
Sanford J. Madigan, Ph.D., Vice President, Corporate Development: Prior to joining Ambit, Dr. Madigan was Vice President of Corporate Development at X-Ceptor Therapeutics where he was instrumental in establishing the strategic direction of the company. During his tenure at X-Ceptor, Dr. Madigan negotiated and executed a $45 million, multi-year corporate partnership with Sankyo Co. Ltd. Prior to joining Ambit as an employee, Dr. Madigan served as a consultant to the Company assisting with building the company's infrastructure and negotiating the license with Yale University for the Company's founding technology.
David J. Austin, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chairman, Scientific Advisory Board: Dr. Austin joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Yale University in 1996. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Research Corporation Research Innovation Award (1997), the Johnson & Johnson Research Institute Focused Giving Award (1999), the AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Excellence in Chemistry Award (2000) and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2001).
Board of Directors
In addition to Messrs. Kinsella and Salka and Dr. Lockhart, other members of the Board of Directors include: Paul Grayson, President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Senomyx; Kevin C. Tang, former Managing Director at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, Inc.; Steve Elms, Managing Director of the Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund; and Standish M. Fleming, Managing Member of Forward Ventures.
Scientific Advisors
In addition to Dr. Austin, the scientific advisers to the company include: Carlos F. Barbas, III, Ph.D., Professor at The Scripps Research Institute; Richard A. Heyman, Ph.D., Sr. Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of X-Ceptor Therapeutics; Mark J. Zoller, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Research at Senomyx; and Charles S. Zuker, Ph.D., Professor of Biology and Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.
About Ambit Biosciences Corporation
Ambit Biosciences Corporation is a private, San Diego-based corporation whose mission is to discover the molecular identities of therapeutically relevant drug targets and identify compounds that modulate the activity of these targets for the treatment of human disease. Using its proprietary ProteomeScanT technologies, Ambit intends to identify and patent the protein targets of small molecules and peptides with therapeutically and commercially important pharmacological or biological activities, but unknown mechanisms of action.