Microcide Pharmaceuticals and Althexis Company Complete Merger, To Receive $60 Million Financing and Rename Company-Essential Therapeutics
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., and WALTHAM, Mass., Oct. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Microcide Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: MCDE - news) and The Althexis Company, Inc. announced that at a special meeting held October 24, 2001, Microcide Pharmaceuticals' shareholders approved the merger of Microcide Pharmaceuticals and Althexis to form Essential Therapeutics, Inc. The Company will continue to trade on the Nasdaq National Market under the new symbol ``ETRX'', and Mark Skaletsky will be Chairman and CEO.
Also approved at the special meeting was a $60 million private equity funding. The merged company received $57 million yesterday in a first closing and anticipates receiving the balance of the funding in the next few days. The syndicate of investors for the financing included Prospect Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Schroder Ventures.
Mr. Skaletsky commented, ``Proceeds of the current financing will be used to further accelerate our promising research programs into development. We are confident that the integration of our powerful platform technologies, including ACTT target validation, the VALID genomics platform and our unique structure-based drug design capabilities, will allow us to become a premier company in the discovery and development of breakthrough pharmaceutical products.''
Essential Therapeutics is a an R&D organization committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of new classes of pharmaceutical products. Essential Therapeutics' powerful target validation and drug discovery programs comprise a broad-based platform, including the Company's proprietary VALID Microbial Genomics technologies and its target validation system, known as ACTT. The Company's novel approach to structure-based drug design (SBDD) and related technologies guides the optimization of drug candidates prior to entry into more advanced preclinical testing and preparation for clinical testing.
Essential Therapeutics has a new website address at essentialtherapeutics.com... |
