Monday, January 26, 2009

Rib-X lands $25M funding, good drug results

By Marc Songini

New Haven, Conn.-based startup Rib-X Pharmaceuticals Inc. has secured a $25 million financing round and found positive results for a Phase 2 test of an antibiotic drug candidate.

This week, Rib-X announced that its new fluoroquinolone antibiotic, delafloxacin (RX-3341), had shown both safety and efficacy in tests. The drug is targeted to treat complicated skin and skin structure infections (cSSSI), generally known as drug-resistant superbugs.

The company said that in the double-blind study, delafloxacin showed comparable efficacy and improved tolerability in comparison with tigecycline (Tygacil). This is the only broad-spectrum agent approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on cSSSI. The drug is made by Wyeth and was approved in 2005.

The cure rates for delafloxacin were 97.2 percent and 92.5 percent, respectively, while the cure rate for tigecycline was 91.2 percent, according to Rib-X. Staphylococcus aureus was the most frequently isolated pathogen, representing some 85 percent of all collected pathogens. The company claimed the drug has the potential for intravenous hospital use, along with a lower-dose oral version.

In separate news, Rib-X also closed on a $25 million financing round to cover the ongoing development of its pipeline of new antibiotics. All of Rib-X’s major investors participated in the round, including Oxford Bioscience Partners, S.R. One, and Vox Equity.

Rib-X Pharmaceuticals is a small molecule drug company. Its underlying drug discovery engine leverages a proprietary high-resolution crystal structure of the ribosome.