Stealthy Elcelyx Therapeutics, Focused on Diabetes, Raises $6M

Elcelyx Therapeutics, a stealthy biotech developing new therapeutics for treating diabetes and other metabolic diseases, is emerging in San Diego, adding its name to the deep roster of local companies with expertise in fighting these related threats to public health.

Elcelyx has raised just over $6 million from investors in what appears to be the first closing of an early stage round, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. The company notes in its filing that it is contemplating a second closing within the next two months, although “the amount of securities to be sold in the second closing has not yet been determined.”

Elcelyx was founded by Alain Baron, a former senior vice president for research at San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMLN]]), according to its website. Baron had served in senior R&D roles at Amylin for nine years, leaving in 2008 to become a San Diego-based entrepreneur-in-residence with Menlo Park, CA-based Morgenthaler Ventures. Morgenthaler identifies Elcelyx as a portfolio company—along with Orexigen, (NASDAQ: [[ticker:OREX]]), another San Diego company focused on obesity and related disorders—and partner Ralph (Chris) Christofferson sits on the biotech’s board. The company offers up just a bare bones website at this point, which says little about its approach to diabetes.

We’ll be sure to poke around more to see what we can find out about this company, particularly as Luke and I get ready for our next big Xconomy event, titled “San Diego’s Fight Against Diabesity.” This event will be held tomorrow night at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, and will bring together a mix of executives and investors from all over the West Coast to talk about the challenges and opportunities in this field. You can register by clicking here. Hope to see you there tomorrow.

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.