Aspire Capital, a Chicago-based fund that invests directly in public companies, has agreed to invest as much as $20 million in San Diego-based MediciNova (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MNOV]]) over the next two years. Aspire agreed to pay the market price at the time of each purchase, with the company controlling the timing and number of shares sold.
In a statement this evening, MediciNova says the Aspire Capital Fund sealed the deal with an initial purchase of 606,060 common shares of MediciNova for $1 million. MediciNova says it issued an unspecified allotment of additional shares to Aspire Capital as consideration for the deal.
MediciNova says it plans to use the net proceeds to advance its two lead drug candidates, bedoradrine sulfate and ibudilast.
Earlier this year, MediciNova CEO Yuichi Iwaki outlined the company’s development of bedoradrine sulfate as an emergency room treatment for acute asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The company has been developing ibudilast for the treatment of progressive multiple sclerosis, drug addiction, and chronic pain.
MediciNova executives have scheduled a meeting with FDA officials on Oct. 22 to review its latest mid-stage trial of bedoradrine sulfate, which sent the price of MediciNova shares plummeting after the company disclosed mixed results in May. MediciNova says it also expects to finalize plans for advancing ibudilast to mid-stage development later this year.
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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