CARLSBAD, Calif., Feb. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Quorex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a
company developing revolutionary antibiotics, today announced it has received
$18.5 million in second round funding from lead investor Prism Venture
Partners, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC), the venture
capital subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson; Tullis-Dickerson & Co., Inc., one of
the country's largest health care focused venture firms; Inglewood Ventures;
CDIB and Pacific Growth Equities. JJDC, Tullis Dickersen and IngleWood were
investors in the first round of financing.
"This latest round of financing allows us to build on our discovery of
powerful inhibitors of a unique bacterial signaling system and to accelerate
animal feasibility studies," stated Robert Robb, President and CEO of Quorex
Pharmaceuticals. "We are very pleased to have this outstanding group of
investors join us and share our tremendous enthusiasm for our recent
developments and the potential of Quorex technologies."
A biopharmaceutical company, Quorex's mission is to discover, develop and
commercialize an entirely new class of broad spectrum antibiotics for the
effective treatment of serious bacterial infections including those that are
resistant to presently available drugs. The Company's proprietary compounds
inhibit a newly discovered bacterial signaling pathway that regulates
virulence in a broad array of human pathogens. Quorex has demonstrated that
its proprietary compounds dramatically inhibit virulence factor production in
both Gram negative and Gram positive bacteria and in drug resistant strains of
bacteria, in vitro.
"It is readily evident that the discovery and development milestones
achieved by Quorex over the past several months are indeed significant and the
breadth, depth and potential of Quorex technology are compelling," said John
Brooks, General Partner, Prism Venture Partners. "The widespread and frequent
use of antibiotics has, in effect, created stronger, more drug-resistant
bacteria. By rapidly developing a treatment capable of attacking the
bacterial communications center -- an element vital to a pathogen's rapid
proliferation and the infective process -- Quorex is poised to revolutionize
the antibiotic marketplace."
Quorex technologies include the recent breakthrough discovery that many
pathogenic bacteria use a common chemical "language" to communicate with one
another and jointly regulate infectious mechanisms. These bacteria begin
their "infection" only after they have communicated with each other that a
critical mass, or "quorum," of bacteria is present in the host.
When this signaling pathway is interrupted, the pathogen's ability to
cause infection is disabled. Quorex compounds target and interrupt this
pathway as a means to destroy the "command and control" center of the
bacterial "army" and therefore have the unprecedented potential to create a
new class of "ideal antibiotics" that are non-toxic, broad spectrum, pathogen
specific, and which apply low selective pressure for the evolution of
resistance mechanisms.
Quorex has applied its proprietary technologies, including target
molecular structures, computational chemistry, high-throughput screening
assays and a powerful bioinformatics platform to effectively design,
synthesize, and identify compounds that dramatically inhibit the quorum
sensing pathway in both Gram negative and Gram positive pathogens. The design
and discovery of these Quorex inhibitor compounds have enabled the initiation
of animal feasibility studies.
Although the Company's primary objective is to develop stand-alone drugs,
recent findings indicate that Quorex compounds, when combined with existing
important antibiotics, significantly potentiate, by up to 60 fold, the killing
action of those antibiotics against key bacterial targets, in vitro. If
corroborated by ongoing animal feasibility studies, the planned adjunctive and
proprietary combination therapies are expected to result in a significantly
lower dosage regimen for important antibiotics, thus potentially decreasing
toxicity and increasing their effectiveness against drug resistant bacteria.
SOURCE Quorex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.quorex.com
CONTACT:
Kevin Denny of Quorex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,
760-602-1910, kdenny@quorex.com
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