Lithera Raises Additional $8M for Injectable Drug to Melt Belly Fat

Belly Fat, "Love Handle" Fat Roll, Liposuction

San Diego-based Lithera says it has secured an additional $8 million to close its Series C round of financing that began more than a year ago. The aesthetic biotech, founded in 2007, has been advancing FDA-registered drugs already approved for use in other indications. Lithera’s lead drug is intended for use as an injectable drug for reducing belly fat.

The company said last year that it expected to extend the second tranche of the round and might raise as much as $25 million. Instead, Lithera says total capital raised in the round was $35.6 million. Existing investors Alta Partners and Domain Associates participated in the round, as well as a new investor AKS Capital and additional undisclosed investors.

Lithera plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes and working capital, primarily to support efforts to advance its lead product candidate, an injectable version of salmeterol xinafoate. At the end of September, the company said it achieved positive results in a mid-stage study of the drug, designated LIPO-202 in localized reduction of fat tissue. Salmeterol already is used as an aerosol inhalant for treating asthma (marketed as Serevent).

CEO George Mahaffey says the funding reflects the investors’ continued confidence in the company. In a statement, Mahaffey says, “LIPO-202 has the potential to be the first and only injectable drug treatment for the targeted, non-ablative reduction of subcutaneous abdominal fat.”

Lithera also has been developing a related drug to treat exophthalmos, a condition caused by an overactive thyroid in which swelling behind the eye causes the eyeball to bulge from its socket.

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.