January 22, 2016
Toronto, Canada – Lumira Capital portfolio company Celtaxsys, Inc. this week received the Georgia Bio 2016 Deal of the Year award for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare IT and medical device companies. The annual awards recognize the most significant financing, partnership and government grant transactions by life sciences companies in Georgia. The recipients will receive their awards at the Georgia Bio Annual Awards Dinner January 28, 6 pm to 9 pm, at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre.
Celtaxsys completed a $40M Series D financing in 2015 from investors Lumira Capital, Domain Partners, RMI Partners, Masters Capital Management and the Georgia Research Alliance Venture Fund. This was the largest venture capital financing of a biotechnology company in Georgia in the last 10 years.
The financing was supplemented by a $5M grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics. The grant will help fund Celtaxsys’s Phase 2 trial assessing the safety and efficacy of the company’s lead drug, acebilustat, a once daily, oral anti-inflammatory medicine, in preserving lung function in CF patients. Acebilustat has been granted Orphan Drug Designation in both the U.S. and the EU.
“Although new therapies have markedly improved the outlook for patients with CF over the past few decades, the effects of chronic inflammation in the lungs is still the primary cause of early death. An effective anti-inflammatory therapy for CF patients is sorely needed,” said Michael Konstan, MD, Vice Dean for Translational Research at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Vice Chair for Clinical Research at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, Cleveland. “Early results demonstrating that acebilustat can reduce elastase and sputum neutrophils are promising.”
Georgia Bio (www.gabio.org) is the state’s life science industry association whose members include pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, medical centers, universities and research institutes, government groups and other business organizations involved in the development of life sciences related products and services.
About Celtaxsys, Inc.
Celtaxsys, Inc. is a privately-held pharmaceutical discovery and development company focused on advancing medicine to treat patients suffering from serious inflammatory diseases. The company is developing a sustainable pipeline of first-in-class immune-modulators, including its flagship compound Acebilustat which is currently being evaluated in two international Phase 2 clinical trials. For more information, visit: http://www.celtaxsys.com.
About Lumira Capital
Lumira Capital leverages over 25 years of experience as one of North America’s leading health care and life sciences venture capital investors. The firm invests in biopharmaceutical, medical device, health IT and consumer health companies whose products deliver transformative improvements in the lives of patients worldwide. Lumira Capital’s investment team has extensive industry experience as entrepreneurs, researchers, clinicians, business development professionals and investors. In addition to a longstanding presence in the U.S. with offices in Boston and San Diego, the firm continues to be the most active domestic health care investor in Canada, where it has offices in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
