Tigris Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately held drug development company, announced today that it has completed a private placement of Series C Convertible Preferred Stock resulting in gross proceeds of approximately $6.5 million. The financing, which was led by Mr. Neil Flanzraich, also included current investors Wexford Spectrum Investors, LLC, and Sonostar Capital Partners, LLC and other institutional and individual investors. Riverbank Capital Securities, Inc. acted as placement agent in connection with the financing.
Tigris intends to use the proceeds from the financing primarily to advance the development of its clinical product pipeline, including its lead compound, Aminoflavone pro-drug (AFP-464), a novel anticancer agent. A multi-center, Phase I, ascending dose clinical study of AFP-464 has been completed in Europe at Institut Gustave-Roussy, Villejuif, France and Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels, Belgium. The company expects to initiate a multi-site phase II breast cancer study in 2010. AFP-464's mechanism of action has shown that AFP-464 is converted to metabolites which bind covalently to DNA, resulting in p53 activation and apoptosis. AFP-464 has shown a unique pattern of growth inhibitory activity in the tumor cell line screening, with breast, ovarian, lung and renal tumor cell lines exhibiting particular sensitivity to the compound. In vivo antitumor activity of AFP-464 has been demonstrated in several Xenograft models in mice bearing breast and renal cancer.
Additionally, Tigris is currently conducting a multi-center Phase I dose escalation trial for GGTI-2418, another first-in-class agent, at Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. GGTI-2418 is a synthetic peptidomimetic inhibitor of geranylgeranyltransferase I (GGTase I) that appears to induce apoptosis by down-regulating several pivotal oncogenic and tumor survival pathways.
