Evoke Pharma Developing its Drug Candidate in Stealth Mode

San Diego-based Evoke Pharma has managed to maintain a low profile since early 2007, when the specialized drug development company got started with the help of some prominent names in the local biotech industry.

Cam Garner, who is listed on Evoke’s web site as a co-founder and chairman, has been on the ground floor of Cadence Pharmaceuticals and at least six other San Diego life sciences startups. Ken Widder, who has founded seven biomedical companies, including NovaCardia and Santarus, also is identified as an Evoke board member.

So when a brief surfaced recently about Evoke getting some new venture funding, I called CFO Matt D’Onofrio to clarify the terms and to learn a little more about Evoke and how it got started. D’Onofrio took my call, but he declined to discuss the deal, saying Evoke prefers to remain in stealth mode at this time. He told me all that Evoke is saying is what’s available on the company’s web site.

As limited as it is, the information is pretty interesting. A lone Evoke Pharma press release, which was dated June 15, indicates the company was headed at that time for a late-stage clinical trial of a new drug candidate for treating a particular gastrointestinal disorder known as diabetic gastroparesis. Evoke elsewhere describes gastroparesis generally as a common problem affecting some 8 million Americans in which the stomach is unable to contract normally, and therefore cannot crush food or push it into the small intestine properly. The symptoms include vomiting, bloating and pain.

Evoke says diabetes is a major cause of gastroparesis, accounting for almost one-third of all cases, although the specific mechanism is unknown. After announcing the successful completion of an early stage trial in its June press release, Evoke said it was planning to discuss its results and a late-stage clinical trial strategy with the FDA in October, with an eye toward starting final-stage trials in 2009.

That’s about the extent of the information available from Evoke’s web site, and the company issued no follow-up announcement in the fall. So perhaps that’s when CEO Dave Gonyer and the board decided it was time to slip below the radar. In fact, they had never really called attention to the company in the first place.

Nevertheless, some additional information is available from an amended disclosure form concerning Evoke’s venture investors, which the company filed with state officials in December. The paperwork shows Evoke has raised a total of almost $12.3 million in equity investments since the company was founded two years ago, although it doesn’t reveal how many tranches it has taken. The investors include Domain Associates, a venture capital firm in Princeton, NJ, that is among San Diego’s most-active life sciences investors, Latterell Venture Partners of San Francisco and individual investors.

Even if Evoke won’t discuss how they’re using the venture funding, it’s nice to know that some local biotechs are still getting funded.

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.