Sangart Gets $50M Infusion for Oxygen-Carrying Blood Adjunct

San Diego-based Sangart, which has been developing an oxygen-carrying compound to counter blood loss in traumatic injuries, says today it has raised more than $50 million in a Series G round of new equity funding. That’s a big deal these days in San Diego, which raised a total of slightly more than $100 million in venture capital for 22 deals of all kinds during the first quarter of 2011

Sangart says the funding, which was led by Leucadia National (NYSE: [[ticker:LUK]]), the diversified New York holding company, also includes warrants that could provide an additional $50 million in future funding. The G Series round brings the company’s total funding to more than $230 million since Sangart was founded 13 years ago.

Sangart CEO Brian O’Callaghan told me five months ago that he was looking ahead to the possibility that the company would eventually proceed to Phase III trials of both MP4OX, the company’s oxygen-carrying blood adjunct, and MP4CO, a related product developed to carry carbon monoxide to patients suffering a sickle cell crisis. In its statement today, the company says only that the funds will be used to advance the development of both products.

Using a novel pegylation approach, Sangart has designed its MP4 molecule for optimal oxygen affinity, diffusion potential, and molecular size to perfuse capillaries and target oxygen delivery to oxygen-deprived tissue. The company also uses its MP4 molecule to deliver precise amounts of carbon monoxide to help stabilize the hemoglobin of patients with sickle cell disease. Once the carbon monoxide has been delivered, Sangart says its MP4OX compound is used to oxygenate the lungs and to carry oxygen to tissues.

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.