Tag Archives: Ambit Biosciences

Ambit Biosciences Completes $50 Million Financing to Advance Lead Drug Candidate for Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Posted on November 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This week Ambit Biosciences announced the closing of the first $25 million tranche of a new $50 million financing. These funds will be used to support development of the company’s lead drug candidate, quizartinib, as well as other programs in its pipeline.

Results from a Phase 2 study evaluating quizartinib in patients with relapsed/refractory of acute myeloid leukemia will be presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in Atlanta, GA. The drug is designed to inhibit the Flt3 kinase, which is mutated in 30 percent of AML patients and is associated with the more aggressive form of the disease. Patients with the mutation have a five-year survival rate of 15 percent, compared to patients without the mutation that have a 40-50 percent five-year survival rate.

Leading the financing was existing investor OrbiMed Advisors. Existing investors also participated, including Aisling Capital, Apposite Healthcare, Roche Ventures, GrowthWorks, MedImmune Ventures, Forward Ventures, GIMV and Radius Ventures. 

Russo Partners conducted proactive media outreach for this announcement and secured coverage across newswires, including Dow Jones VentureWire; industry publications, including BioWorld Today; and regional publications, including the U-T San Diego. Read more about the financing in the articles below from Xconomy and U-T San Diego.

 Xconomy

 U-T San Diego

 

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Russo Partners Attends the 30th Annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference

Posted on January 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The Westin St. Francis in San Francisco’s Union Square

The largest healthcare investor conference of the year, the 30th Annual
JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, kicked off activities last week at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. The conference was attended by over 8,000 participants and 395 presenting companies.

Multiple clients presented at the conference, including Reata Pharmaceuticals, Cellular Dynamics International, Ambit Biosciences, Arena Pharmaceuticals, Puma Biotechnology, MorphoSys, Probiodrug and Amarin Corporation. Additionally, some of our clients presented at the adjacent Biotech Showcase 2012 held at the Parc 55 Wyndham Hotel, including Advanced Cell Technology, AssureRx Health, GlycoVaxyn and Sernova Corp.

Both conferences provided excellent forums for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies of all development stages and sizes to meet with investors, potential partners and buyers.

Russo Partners was involved with each step of the process, securing meetings with the media, investors, analysts and bankers. Russo Partners also supported other client communications activities related to the conference, such as news releases announcing client presentations and talking points for media meetings.

With over 100 meetings secured for our clients, we were extremely pleased with the connections made at this year’s JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, and we are looking forward to doing the same for next year as well.

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Russo Partners’ West Coast Office Welcomes Attendees of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) to San Diego

Posted on December 21, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Last week Russo Partners’ West Coast office welcomed clients, analysts, researchers as well as other life science insiders to the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). This year the meeting was held a few blocks away from our West Coast office at the San Diego Convention Center from Dec. 10-13.

One of the largest professional societies focused on the understanding, treatment and prevention of blood disorders, the ASH Annual Meeting is always an excellent forum for networking and interacting with leaders in the field and discussing the latest research and therapies in development.

Russo Partners worked to support client activities at the meeting in various capacities, ranging from coordinating meetings with key contacts in the investment community to drafting news releases announcing data presentations. In addition, due to the location of the conference, we were able to coordinate networking activities for San Diego-based clients with relevant attendees.

Clients attending the conference included Ambit Biosciences, S*BIO and TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals. Ambit Biosciences gave four oral and four poster presentations highlighting preclinical and clinical studies evaluating quizartinib, a FLT3 inhibitor for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and S*BIO gave oral presentations of Phase 2 study results for the company’s lead JAK2 inhibitor, pacritinib, in patients with myelofibrosis (MF). TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals also had an oral presentation of new data on its Smac mimetic drug candidate TL32711 demonstrating that it induced apoptosis in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, alone and in combination with chemotherapy.

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