Cambridge-Based Cequent, Backed by Several Local Investors, Sells Quarter of $10.8M Offering - CBL

By Citybizlist Staff

CAMBRIDGE -- Cequent Pharmaceuticals Inc. has raised $2.65 million of a $10.84 million equity offering, according to a Reg D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investors in the Cambridge-based company are: Ampersand Ventures, with offices in Wellesley; Gold Hill Capital, with an office in Boston; Quincy-based Nexus Medical Partners; Novartis Option Fund by Novartis Venture Funds, with U.S. headquarters in Cambridge; Pappas Ventures, based in Research Triangle Park, N.C.; and Japan's Yasuda Enterprise Development.

Principals named in the filing include President and CEO Peter D. Parker and Chiang Li, founder, director and chairman of the scientific advisory board. Also named are directors Herbert Hooper of Ampersand, Lauren Silverman of Novartis Option Fund, Michael Taylor of Cambridge-based Ensemble Discovery, Thomas Hancock of Newton-based New England Partners Capital LP and Eric Linsley of A.M. Pappas Life Science Ventures III LP.

Cequent is an early-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops drugs to prevent and treat a range of human diseases, from inflammatory diseases to cancer. Its first drugs, now in pre-clinical development, target colon cancer prevention and inflammatory bowel disease.

Reg D filing: http://tinyurl.com/yd9ebe6

Also at Citybizlist, see:

Cequent Names Ted Hibben Chief Business Officer

Cequent Scientific Advisory Board Adds Judy Lieberman, M.D. Ph.D., and Patrice Courvalin, M.D.

Cequent Pharmaceuticals Meets Novartis Option Fund Milestone

Cequent Pharmaceuticals Completes $9 Million Series a Financing With Equity Investment from Novartis

Bios from Cequent's Web site:

Peter D. Parker
President and CEO

Mr. Parker is President and CEO of Cequent Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Prior to joining Cequent, Mr. Parker was a General Partner at Ampersand Ventures where he focused on the firm's Life Sciences activities. He has served as a director of numerous companies including ACLARA Biosciences, Tomah Products, VITEX, Magellan Biosciences, Dynex and Pentose Pharmaceuticals and as Chairman of Alexis, NOVEX, CoPharma, Huntington Laboratories, Protein Ingredient Technologies, Cyclis Pharmaceuticals, Nanodyne, Panacos Pharmaceuticals, AC Tech, Boston Heart Lab and TekCel. Prior to Ampersand, Mr. Parker spent fourteen years at AMAX, Inc. where he was President of Climax Performance Materials Corporation and Corporate Director of Research and Development. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Columbia University.

Chiang J. Li, M.D.
Founder, Director and Chairman of Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Li is President and Chief Executive Officer, Boston Biomedical, Inc. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. From September 2003 to January 2007, Dr. Li was Chief Scientific Officer, Executive Vice President and Head of ArQule Biomedical Institute, ArQule Inc (Nasdaq:ARQL). He is the Chairman of ArQule's scientific advisory board. Dr. Li joined ArQule in September 2003. He previously served as the scientific founder and Vice President of Research at Cyclis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an Ampersand Ventures portfolio company. Dr. Li was a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, a physician and the Head of a GI Cancer Laboratory at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School.

His research team at Harvard invented transkingdom RNAi technology, which promises to accelerate biomedical research and medical therapies based on RNA interference. He is a recipient of a number of awards and recognitions, and has published numerous highly cited articles in top leading science journals. Dr. Li graduated from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology and received his M.D. degree Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Medical School, completed medical residency and fellowship at Harvard's Brigham Women's Hospital/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center, and is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Herbert H. Hooper, Ph.D.
Managing General Partner, Ampersand Ventures

Dr. Hooper is a Managing General Partner at Ampersand Ventures. Prior to joining Ampersand in 2002, Dr. Hooper served as executive vice president and chief technical officer of ACLARA BioSciences, a public life sciences company which he founded in 1995. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Hooper served as a research director at Soane Technologies, Inc. From 1990 to 1993, he served in various product and business development positions at Air Products and Chemicals. Dr. Hooper currently serves as chairman of the board of RadPharm, Inc. and Magellan BioSciences, Inc., both of which are private life sciences companies. Dr. Hooper also serves on the board of Assay Designs, Inc., IBT Reference Lab, and Medifacts, and Panacos Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He previously served as a member of the board of directors of ACLARA BioSciences and Cyclis Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Hooper holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Thomas Hancock
Principal, New England Partners

Prior to joining New England Partners, Mr. Hancock was a Senior Analyst and Managing Director at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, responsible for covering biopharmaceuticals and drug discovery tools. Previously, Mr. Hancock was a biotech analyst at NationsBanc Montgomery; was one of the early management employees at COR Therapeutics, Inc.; and was in laboratory research and business development at Genentech, Inc. He holds a BS, Molecular Biology and an MBA,both from UC Berkeley.

Lauren Silverman, Ph.D.
Managing Director, Novartis Option Fund

Dr. Silverman is a Managing Director of the Novartis Option Fund in Cambridge, MA, USA. Prior to joining the Option Fund she was Global Head of Oncology Research Operations for Novartis. Previously, Lauren spent much of her career in Licensing & Business Development, first at OSI Pharmaceuticals and later at Pfizer with responsibilities in the areas of CNS, ophthalmology and oncology. Lauren was also a Director of Strategic Alliances and Head of Cell Biology after having been a founding scientist of Cadus Pharmaceuticals. Lauren was a postdoctoral fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Princeton University and earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Utah. She is the author of 12 scientific publications and 4 patents. Lauren currently serves on the boards of Ascent Therapeutics, Proteostasis Therapeutics and Cequent Pharmaceuticals.

Eric W. Linsley
Partner, Pappas Ventures

Mr. Linsley is an experienced operating executive and venture capital investor who prior to joining Pappas in 2000 served as Chief Financial Officer of TriPath Imaging, Inc. (Nasdaq: TPTH), a medical device company. Mr. Linsley played a key role in the three-way merger between AutoCyte, NeoPath and Neuromedical Systems that created TriPath. Prior to the merger, he served as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations at AutoCyte where he led the company in a successful public equity offering in 1997. From 1991 to 1997, Mr. Linsley worked as an investment professional with Ampersand Ventures, a leading venture capital firm based in Boston. As a partner at Ampersand, he held interim management positions in operating and financial roles for various industrial products and healthcare companies. He previously served as a management consultant with Bain & Co. and McKinsey & Co., and was a certified public accountant with Arthur Andersen LLP. Mr. Linsley is a director of Emerald BioAgriculture, FlowCardia, and Sensys Medical. He is also a director of Panacos Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: PANC), and played a key role in its successful reverse merger with a publicly-traded company. He was directly responsible for the investment by Pappas Ventures II in Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, which Johnson & Johnson acquired in 2005 at a substantial premium. He is also a board observer at LipoScience. Mr. Linsley received his BA in Economics from Trinity College, an MS in Accounting from New York University and an MBA from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael D. Taylor, Ph.D.
President and CEO, Ensemble Discovery Corporation

Dr. Taylor has been in the pharmaceutical industry for more than twenty years with extensive experience in drug discovery and development, licensing and business development, and managing R&D alliances with pharmaceutical and biotech partners. Most recently, Dr. Taylor served as Senior Vice President for Pfizer's Global R&D division where he was responsible for global project and portfolio management. In other positions with Pfizer (and previously Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis), Dr. Taylor led discovery, and early- and late-stage development projects across multiple therapeutic areas, including Lipitor® and Neurontin.® He has authored or coauthored 65 articles, reviews, and published abstracts and holds 6 patents. Dr. Taylor earned a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo and was awarded an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in natural products synthesis and structure elucidation at the University of Pennsylvania.