With Extra Dose of Cash, Zogenix Raises VC Round to $71M for Launch of Migraine Treatment

San Diego-based Zogenix got a $20 million vote of confidence for the anticipated launch next month of its needle-free, drug-and-device delivery system for migraine and cluster headaches.

Zogenix, which announced in September that it had closed on a $51 million Series B round of venture funding, says it extended the round to accommodate an additional $20 million in a second tranche investment made by Chicago Growth Partners. In connection with the financing, Arda Minocherhomjee of Chicago Growth Partners also joins the board at Zogenix.

Zogenix was founded in 2006 as a specialty pharmaceutical with the goal of incorporating innovative technologies to differentiate its medical therapies for central nervous system and pain disorders. The company’s lead drug-device, which was approved by the FDA in July, enables patients to self-administer an injection just the under the skin of sumatriptan, the fastest-acting migraine medicine. The device, which contains a pre-filled, 6-milligram dose of sumatriptan, is intended to deliver the pain reliever in the abdomen or thigh. “We believe it has the potential to be used as a replacement for other injectable forms of sumatriptan and also as a faster acting, more efficacious alternative to tablet and nasal triptans,” Zogenix says on its website.

The company says the $71 million raised in its second venture round will be used to support the market introduction of its product in January. Zogenix says a new investor, Oxford Finance Corp., as well as existing investors Clarus Ventures, Domain Associates, Scale Venture Partners, Thomas, McNerney & Partners, and Abingworth Management, participated in the round.

Zogenix says it also is advancing its product pipeline and has been approaching other biopharmaceutical companies about licensing its proprietary needle-free “DosePro” technology. But the company also has work going on with conventional oral pills. The company says it is preparing to enter a late-stage clinical trial of ZX002, which is the next drug candidate in its development pipeline. The oral drug is a novel, long-lasting formulation of hydrocodone without acetaminophen for the treatment of chronic pain, and uses Elan Pharma’s proprietary Spheroidal Oral Drug Absorption System (SODAS).

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.