SAN DIEGO, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Triad Therapeutics, Inc., announced
today it raised $30 million in a second private round of financing led by CSFB
Private Equity, the global private equity arm of Credit Suisse Group, and
International Biomedicine Holdings. Triad plans to use the funds to further
develop its novel chemistry technology platform that promises to speed drug
discovery by producing high-affinity lead compounds without the hit and miss
approach of conventional approaches to drug discovery. Michael Meyers, a
Managing Director of Global Biomedical Partners, as representative of
International Biomedicine Holdings, will be joining Triad's board. Other new
investors include the Invus Group, 511 Equities and Yasuda Development.
Existing investors who participated include Skyline Ventures, H&Q Life Science
Investors, Mediphase Venture Partners, J&J Development Corporation, GeneChem
Technologies and Lombard Odier & Cie.
"Triad is one of the very few companies that is truly leveraging the
genome," commented John C. Chabala, Ph.D., former President and Chief
Scientific Officer of Pharmacopeia, and former Vice President of Discovery
Chemistry at Bristol-Meyers Squibb.
Triad's IOPE(TM) (Integrated Object-oriented PharmacoEngineering)
technology uniquely represents the confluence of two important trends in drug
discovery. The first is "smart" chemistry platform technologies, which
accelerate small molecule drug discovery. The second is structural
proteomics, which leverages knowledge about the structures of entire families
of proteins in order to construct drug candidates that bind specifically to
protein targets within a given family.
Triad's IOPE is the first technology to make high throughput nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy central to the drug discovery process.
Additionally, Triad is the first company to utilize NMR in a time-efficient
way so that complete 3-D structures of protein targets are not required in
order to determine the structural information necessary for subsequent drug
design. As a result, Triad can create specific, nanomolar-level chemical
leads with unprecedented speed and throughput.
"Small molecule chemistry platform technologies are among the most
exciting areas in biomedical investing," said Michael Schmertzler of CSFB
Private Equity, who co-led the new financing. "There are only a few companies
in this area, and the output of their technology is far along in the drug
discovery process -- in the production of lead compounds rather than target
validation, for example -- which gives them very high value."
Triad was founded in 1999 by Stephen Coutts, Ph.D., Dan Sem, Ph.D., and
Skyline Ventures, and recently achieved proof of principle of its technology
by constructing several nanomolar-level hits to a target in its first gene
family. With the proceeds of this new financing round, the company plans to
develop several leads for its own account, as well as form partnerships with
pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers for which Triad's technology
enables a jump from the partner's validated targets to nanomolar-level
chemical leads in just a few weeks.
Triad Therapeutics, Inc., is headquartered in San Diego, California. For
more information on Triad Therapeutics, Inc., please visit our website at
http://www.triadtherapeutics.com.
IOPE(TM) is a trademark of Triad Therapeutics, Inc.
SOURCE Triad Therapeutics, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.triadtherapeutics.com
CONTACT:
Stephen Coutts, Ph.D., President of Triad
Therapeutics, Inc., 858-457-0100 ext. 202,
scoutts@triadtherapeutics.com
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