Gamida Cell raises $16m in fourth financing round

The company says the capital will be used to support its cell tissue regeneration product pipeline.

Israeli start-up Gamida-Cell Ltd. announced today that it had raised $16 million in a fourth financing round led by Israel Healthcare Ventures Ltd.. Current shareholders Elscint Biomedical Investment, Denali Ventures LLC, Biomedical Investments, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) also participated.

The company said the capital would be used to support its cell tissue regeneration product pipeline, including the cardiac regeneration product, now at the advanced pre-clinical stage of development, and the planned clinical testing of the company’s flagship product StemEx for indications other than hematological diseases.

Gamida-Cell’s first product, StemEx, which it jointly developed with Teva, is designed to assist in bone-marrow transplantation in patients suffering from malignant conditions such as leukemia and lymphoma. Most such patients are unable to find a suitable bone marrow donor and it has been found that umbilical cord blood stem cells (which can offer a better tissue match) can serve as a suitable alternative to bone marrow and can be used in transplants for such patients. However, a single donation of umbilical cord blood does not contain enough cells to enable a transplant in an adult patient. To solve this, StemEx utilizes a small molecule that enables large-scale, ex-vivo self-renewal of stem / progenitor cells, with limited differentiation, in a reasonably short time.

Gamida-Cell president and CEO Dr. Yael Margolin said, “The clinical results of the Phase I/II study of StemEx as a treatment for leukemia and lymphoma were extremely favorable. We plan to begin a global, pivotal study of StemEx in the very near future to demonstrate the efficacy of the product. Assuming smooth sailing, we plan to bring it to market in partnership with Teva in 2009.”

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 27, 2006

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006

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