San Diego’s Cebix, founded in 2008 to develop a new supplemental treatment for complications arising from type 1 diabetes, intends to raise more than $20 million in a Series B round needed to fund pivotal trials, according to VentureWire. Cebix CEO James Calloway told VentureWire the startup raised $28.5 million from Sofinnova Ventures, InterWest Partners, and Thomas McNerny & Partners in its first round of funding.
At the American Diabetes Association’s annual scientific conference in San Diego last summer, Cebix presented data on its C-peptide replacement therapy to address microvascular damage associated with type 1 diabetes.
As we reported at the time, C-peptide has been shown to play a role in keeping the smallest blood vessels healthy in different tissues. The deficiency of C-peptide, which is produced naturally in the body during the process that forms insulin, leads to nerve damage and a variety of other complications in patients with type 1 diabetes.
Diabetics using insulin often experience a circulatory-related decline in nerve function, kidney function, and vision from a deficiency of the peptide. Callaway said Cebix is completing a 30-patient study of C-peptide replacement therapy, and plans to conduct a pivotal trial with 600 patients.
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.
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