San Diego-based HemaQuest Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing small molecule drugs for treating sickle cell disease and other blood disorders, has gotten another capital transfusion after once again extending its Series B financing.
In a statement today, HemaQuest says it has raised an additional $13 million to support a mid-stage trial of the company’s lead drug candidate for patients with sickle cell disease. That’s almost equal to the $16 million HemaQuest previously raised in three separate steps of its Series B financing. The participating investors are Aberdare Ventures, De Novo Ventures, Forward Ventures, Latterell Venture Partners, and Lilly Ventures.
HemaQuest was founded in Seattle in 2007, and moved its headquarters to San Diego in late 2010 after hiring former Favrille CEO John Longenecker.
HemaQuest says its most recent extension should enable the company to complete a planned Phase 2b trial of its lead drug candidate by early 2014. The experimental drug, HQK-1001, belongs to a class of compounds known as Short Chain Fatty Acid Derivatives (SCFADs) that have been shown to stimulate fetal hemoglobin expression and red blood cell production in the laboratory.
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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