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Start-Up Gets $36 Million: TetraLogic, of Malvern, is Developing Drugs That Help the Body Kill a Variety of Cancer Cells

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 June 2006, 03:00 CDT

By Linda Loyd, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Jun. 13--A Malvern biotechnology company developing drugs to restore the body's natural ability to kill cancer cells said yesterday that it has raised $36 million from private-equity investors in Philadelphia and as far away as San Francisco.

TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals Inc. is developing small-molecule therapies that have been shown in mice to remove a fundamental defense mechanism that cancer cells use to survive.

In preclinical studies, the experimental drugs showed potential to treat many types of cancer, including ovarian, colorectal and leukemia, president and chief executive officer John M. Gill said.

TetraLogic, formerly called Gentara Corp., was founded in 2003 by scientists George L. McLendon and Yigong Shi at Princeton University based on a technology that enables drugs to unblock, or open, the cell pathway that results in the death of tumor cells.

"The company has accumulated some great chemistry and biology," said Paul Schmitt, managing director at Pennsylvania Early Stage Partners in Wayne, an investor in the latest $36 million financing and an earlier $8 million round in 2004.

"Every day, cancer cells break out in your body, but through apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the cells are killed," Schmitt said. "What happens in cancer patients, that system breaks down, resulting in proliferation of tumors and other cancers. This company has developed small molecules that can restore the cell's ability to die naturally."

The start-up moved from Princeton to Malvern in July 2004, and, earlier that year, raised an initial $8 million, led by HealthCare Ventures L.L.C., of Princeton.

Mark A. McKinlay, the company's chief scientific officer, said scientists have been testing the compounds on human ovarian cancer tumors in mice. "The tumors grow, are treated with our compounds, and the tumors shrink," said McKinlay, a founder and former vice president of research and development at ViroPharma Inc. in Exton.

"We have tested this with a wide range of approved and experimental cancer therapies," said Gill, TetraLogic's CEO, who was former CEO of 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Yardley, which Johnson & Johnson acquired in 2003 for $137 million.

"In many cases, we enabled those therapies to work where they didn't work before, or we enabled the concentrations of those drugs to be decreased as much as 18 times," Gill said.

Brenda D. Gavin, managing partner of Quaker BioVentures Inc., said: "We've kept track of the company since its inception, and we have known the management for many years." The combination of "strong chemistry plus a very interesting target" prompted her Philadelphia venture-capital firm to invest, she said.

"We heard from one large company that they see 300 to 400 new molecules every month, and this is in the top 1 percent in quality of the science," Gavin said.

TetraLogic is preparing to test the compounds in cancer patients next year.

The $36 million financing was led by Latterell Venture Partners, San Francisco, and included Quaker BioVentures; the Vertical Group, of Summit, N.J.; and Amgen Ventures, of San Diego. The latest financing also included prior investors: HealthCare Ventures, Pennsylvania Early Stage Partners, and Kammerer Associates, of Santa Fe, N.M.

Contact staff writer Linda Loyd at 215-854-2831 or lloyd@phillynews.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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