ACADIA Pharmaceuticals Completes $25 Million Private Placement
2003-03-28 08:00 (New York)
Alan G. Walton of Oxford Bioscience Partners Appointed to ACADIA's Board of Directors
SAN DIEGO and COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --
ACADIA Pharmaceuticals announced today that it has completed a $25 million
private placement of its preferred stock. The financing round was led by
Oxford Bioscience Partners of Westport Connecticut, and included investments
from OrbiMed Advisors LLC, Federated Kaufmann Fund, LD Pensions, Hambrecht &
Quist Capital Management LLC, ABN AMRO Ventures, Carnegie Fund II
Biotechbridge, and Dansk Kapitalanlaeg Aktieselskab. ACADIA also announced
that Alan G. Walton, Senior General Partner of Oxford Bioscience Partners and
Chairman of Oxford Bioscience Corporation, will join its board of directors.
"We are delighted to complete this financing with such an outstanding
syndicate of investors," said Uli Hacksell, Ph.D., ACADIA's Chief Executive
Officer. "We are pleased to have attracted investors of the highest caliber,
and are grateful for the continuing support from our international investor
base that has been so instrumental in ACADIA's success. ACADIA is now well
positioned to accelerate the clinical development of our advanced drug
candidates, and to fully exploit the exciting portfolio of drug discovery
assets generated by our proprietary platform. We are also very fortunate to
be able to tap into the unique expertise and guidance of Alan Walton as ACADIA
embarks on this exciting new stage of its development."
"We have spent considerable time surveying the landscape of later-stage,
platform-driven drug discovery companies and I believe that ACADIA is poised
to emerge as one of the major players," said Alan G. Walton, Ph.D., D.Sc.,
Senior General Partner of Oxford Bioscience Partners. "ACADIA's proprietary
discovery platform encompasses a unique blend of biological and chemical
assets. By combining this highly productive platform with an innovative drug
discovery approach and a top-notch team of executives and scientific advisors,
ACADIA is well positioned to deliver a new generation of improved therapies,
which address some of the largest areas of unmet medical need."
Dr. Walton joined Oxford in 1987 and has led Oxford's investment strategy
in genomics and biotechnology. His portfolio includes founding investments in
Human Genome Sciences, Gene Logic, Genetic Therapy, Exelixis, and Geron. Dr.
Walton currently sits on the board of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.,
Research!America, and is Chairman of Avalon Pharmaceuticals, Psychiatric
Genomics, Endogeny Bio Corporation and Asterand, Inc.
ACADIA Pharmaceuticals is a drug discovery and development company that
efficiently discovers novel small molecule drug candidates using its
proprietary chemical-genomics platform. ACADIA has successfully applied its
platform to generate a broad discovery pipeline directed at large unmet
medical needs including Parkinson's disease, chronic pain, psychosis, and
glaucoma. Two of ACADIA's drug candidates have been successfully advanced
from initial discovery to clinical development, and several additional
programs are in late-stage preclinical testing. ACADIA's corporate
headquarters as well as its genomics and biological research facilities are
located in San Diego, California and its chemistry research facilities are
located in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Oxford Bioscience Partners (OBP) is a life science venture capital firm
that provides equity financing and management assistance to
entrepreneurial-driven companies in the bioscience and healthcare industries.
The General Partners of OBP currently manage venture funds with combined
committed capital of more than $800 million. Additionally, the General
Partners, collectively, have served on the Board of Directors of more than
100 biotechnology and healthcare companies and have assumed the position of
Chairman or President for more than 20 bioscience concerns. They have
extensive operating management experience in the U.S. and abroad and have
played a key role in the founding of a number of successful bioscience
ventures. |
