Monday, May 2, 2011

Advent portfolio biotech Ampla Pharma picks up $1.5M

By Michelle Lang

Advent Healthcare Ventures, a Boston healthcare and life sciences investment firm, has funded and taken in another biotechnology firm – most recently, per federal documents, supporting the $1.5 million equity funding of stealthy firm Ampla Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Ampla’s regulatory filing is an amendment to a previous filing, dated from February 2010 when the company, based then in La Jolla, Calif., indicated that it had pulled in $295,000 of a planned $1.2 million funding.

The April 29 regulatory filing pointed to a new address, Advent Healthcare Ventures’ High Street address in Boston, and indicated the $1.47 million funding is part of a larger, planned $2.4 million financing.

Ampla does not yet have a working website.

Previous filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have identified Ampla’s investors as including Integra Ventures III, Crabtree Ventures and MVM Life Sciences Partners, in addition to Advent Healthcare Ventures. The document filed with the SEC regarding $1.47 million funding does not identify the investors, but the list of related persons on the filing names two Advent Healthcare Ventures members – Charles Cohen and Jason Fisherman – and Eric Bednarski of MVM.

Previous regulatory filings also named James Hauske as a related person, and Hauske himself indicated on his LinkedIn profile that his current position is president and founder of Ampla Pharmaceuticals. Hauske, a former senior vice president at Sepracor Inc., is not included in the April 29 filing.

Hauske’s name is included as the inventor behind a patent application assigned to Ampla Pharmaceuticals and related to the treatment linked to metabolic syndrome.

Hauske is also the founder of Prexa Pharmaceuticals Inc., which also lists its location at Advent Healthcare Ventures. The company made news today, naming Evelyn Graham and Scott Reines as new members of its executive team. Prexa also filed federal documents on Friday indicating that the company had raised $3.25 million of a planned $7 million funding round. 

Hauske would not discuss Ampla Pharmaceuticals’ funding and directed Mass High Tech to Advent Healthcare Ventures. No one at Advent Healthcare Ventures was immediately available to comment.