QrxPharma receives venture funding for pain drugs

A young Australian biotech developing anti-pain and blood-clotting drugs, QRxPharma, has successfully completed a $US5 million financing round conducted by a group of Australian and US venture funds.

The injection comes only months after QRxPharma won a $250,000 Biotechnology Innovation Fund (BIF) grant to pursue research on a snake venom protein with the potential to rapidly stem bleeding from surgical and traumatic wounds.

However the fresh financing will be directed primarily toward the company's lead candidate, a pain-killing drug which could potentially replace morphine in the

$3 billion market for treating moderate to severe pain.

Venture capital companies involved in the Series A preferred stock financing were led by US and Australia-based Innovation Capital, whose chief executive, Michael Quinn, is also a co-founder of QRx.

Others in the group include Sydney's Nanyang Ventures, SpringRidge Ventures (a San Francisco VC specialising in early-stage bio-pharm and medical device companies) and UniSeed (a pre-seed and seed fund joint venture between the University of Queensland and Melbourne University).

QRx pain-killing technology, developed at the University of Queensland, involves a combination of existing narcotics which may avoid the debilitating side-effects caused by current agents for controlling moderate to severe pain, such as morphine.

The efficacy of its lead product has already been demonstrated by preliminary clinical studies and the new funds will be used to complete Phase II clinical trials, according to QRx founder and CEO Dr Gary Pace. The $US5 million is sufficient to reach significant milestones with the technology and initiate the product's registration process with the US Food and Drug Administration.

Part of the funding will also be used to further development of blood-clotting drugs based on a protein isolated from the venom of the Australian brown snake. Commercialisation of the product, called Haempatch, could lead to prevention of excessive bleeding in open heart surgery and anti-bleeding remedies in emergency situations and general surgery, the company claims.

Last September QRx was awarded a BIF grant to fully characterise the snake venom protein, clone its gene and express it in E. coli for large-scale protein expression and purification. The grant is also underwriting work on examining the ability of the protein to produce clot formation in an animal model system.

Though based on Australian technology, QRxPharma is deliberately operating from a US office and has involved US venture firms in its financing exercise, Pace said.

"The key to what we are doing is that we are focused on both the big pharmas and the big capital markets and both of those are in the US," he said.

"Those are our customers and we are leveraging off strong Australian R&D but we are targeting our customers from the beginning."