Radius Health Inc.'s new equity cash of $43 million will go toward further work with its anabolic bone builder BA058, in Phase III trials as an injectable therapy and Phase II as a "short-wear" patch.

Cash on hand with the latest financing "should take us neatly through the patch data [due in September], and then we'll make a decision on what the next steps are," said Michael Wyzga, president and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Radius. Phase III data with the subcutaneous version will be available "on the back half of 2014," he said.

A synthetic peptide analogue of human parathyroid hormone-related protein BA058 could provide a solution for osteoporosis patients at high risk of fracture.

Wyzga said the data so far suggest that BA058 works better and longer than Forteo (teraparatide, Eli Lilly and Co.) because of a difference between the ways the two compounds bind to the same target. Radius' therapy also seems more effective in "big heavy bones," such as hips, which often fracture in osteoporosis patients.

Compliance for daily, subcutaneous Forteo is "somewhere on the order of 200 days," Wyzga told BioWorld Today. "It's all a big joke until you jab yourself in the belly with a needle. People simply don't use it long enough to have any effect. People don't like needles; they don't like to feel like they're sick."

What's more, "doctors that we talk to don't prescribe [Forteo] because they know they're going to have to train their patients how to use a needle, maybe for the first time in their lives, and secondarily, they're probably not going to use it anyway," Wyzga said. "That's why we think the patch is a big deal," developed in conjunction with 3M Drug Delivery Systems Inc., of St. Paul, Minn., he said. "It works slightly better, because you have faster uptake," too.

Radius' daily subcutaneous product is no small deal, either, offering better efficacy with no need (unlike Forteo) for refrigeration. Of course, there's still the needle, "not a big honking needle, but a needle, nevertheless," Wyzga said.

He said the company decided not to pursue the patch route exclusively because the 2,400-patient Phase III trial with the subcutaneous BA058 was already about half-enrolled by the time new methods had been sufficiently explored. The thumb-sized patch only needs to stay in place for about five minutes, though it can be left on all day.

In late 2005, Radius licensed BA058 and its analogues from Paris-based Ipsen SA. The worldwide license excludes Japan, where Ipsen previously granted a license to Tokyo-based Teijin Ltd. Under its deal with Ipsen, Radius is obligated to "under €30 million [US$39 million]" in milestone payments over the course of the arrangement, "so it's relatively inexpensive," Wyzga said.

Radius' latest financing was led by F2 Biosciences III L.P., with participation from existing investors, Biotech Growth N.V., MPM Capital, Brookside Capital, MPM Bio IV NVS Strategic Fund and BB Biotech Ventures.

Joining the Radius board of directors are Morana Jovan-Embiricos, managing partner at F2, and Owen Hughes, chief business officer and head of corporate development at Intarcia Therapeutics Inc., of Hayward, Calif. Hughes formerly served as a director at Brookside.

In other financings news:

• Esperion Therapeutics Inc., of Ann Arbor, Mich., pulled down $33 million in a preferred stock financing for ETC-1002, an oral, once-daily, LDL-C-lowering small-molecule therapy designed to target known lipid and carbohydrate metabolic pathways as a way of knocking down cholesterol while dodging side effects experienced by some users of stents.

• to-BBB Technologies BV, of Leiden, the Netherlands, disclosed a €2.5 million (US$3.2 million) financing round supported by its existing investors. The additional resources allow the company to broaden the Phase I/IIa study in metastatic and primary brain cancer from two indications to four. The company uses its G-Technology for sustained-release delivery of existing drugs.