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CancerVax, Kalypsys Land $83M in New Funding

CancerVax, Kalypsys Land $83M in New Funding

BY MARION WEBB

Senior Staff Writer

Two local biotechnology firms recently raised a combined $83 million in new funding.

Vaccine maker CancerVax Corp. in Carlsbad raised $55 million in a second round of financing.

San Diego-based drug discovery firm Kalypsys Inc. secured $43 million in a first-round financing.

Both firms said they will use the money to grow their technologies.

CancerVax’s president and CEO David Hale, said the funding will help with the development of the firm’s lead product, an experimental melanoma vaccine dubbed Canvaxin.

The therapeutic cancer vaccine is presently being evaluated in late-stage human trials at more than 50 sites for stage III and stage IV melanoma, CancerVax said.

Hale said he filed with the Food and Drug Administration to get permission to test the vaccine in Stage IV colon cancer patients.

New investors include JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management, WestLB Asset Management, Schroder Ventures Life Sciences, GE Capital’s Capital Funding business.

Kalypsys, which was spun out of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in 2001, plans to use its new cash to advance its drug discovery effort.

The firm’s technologies have been driven by Peter Schultz, director of the Genomics Institute, and his team of scientists.

Kalypsys has automated biological and chemical technologies to screen compounds against promising drug targets.

The Series A financing was led by the Sprout Group of Menlo Park and also by Tavistock Life Sciences of Windermere, Fla. Other investors included CMEA Ventures of San Francisco; Lombard Odier & Co. of Geneva; Novartis BioVenture Fund of La Jolla; Aravis Ventures of San Francisco and individual investor Alejandro Zaffaroni.

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