Offer investors novel products, a public appetite for beauty and a cash-based market, and it doesn't take long to pique their interest.

That's what happened for Kythera Biopharmaceuticals Inc., a young dermatology company that closed a $30 million Series B round in late July with some of biotechnology's most notable investment firms.

New investor Prospect Venture Partners, of Palo Alto, Calif., and existing investor ARCH Venture Partners, of Chicago, co-led the financing., which included participation from Versant Ventures, of Menlo Park, Calif.; Altitude Life Science Ventures; the UCLA Venture Fund in Los Angeles; and the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati Investment Co., of Palo Alto.

Los Angeles-based Kythera focuses on the aesthetic and restorative dermatology markets, which are expanding due to an aging population and a growing public interest in restorative and preventative care.

"Predominantly, the types of things we're going after are elective procedures or cash-pay," said Amit Munshi, the company's co-founder and chief business officer, who emphasized that Kythera is focused on novel dermatology candidates, not "me-too products or reformulations of existing products."

Founded exactly a year ago and started with a small amount of money in a Series A round, the company initially was called AestheRx Inc. before being changed to Kythera, the name of an island off the coast of southern Greece in the Mediterranean Sea. Kythera was the chief center for the worship of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty and love.

Love of beauty is what makes Kythera's products attractive to those who want to reduce their fat cells and wrinkles, and shape their faces, without the use of medical devices or surgery. Irvine, Calif.-based Allergan Inc. reported sales earlier this week of its anti-wrinkle treatment Botox, which brought in $379 million in the second quarter, a jump from the previous quarter of 17 percent.

"Botox is on some absolutely unbelievable clip in terms of growth," Munshi told BioWorld Today. "We don't compete with Botox, but Botox is a proxy for the kind of market that we're after."

While Botox is used for medical indications such as hyperhydrosis, or excessive sweating, its cosmetic use for wrinkles makes up a large portion of its sales. As would be the case with Kythera's potential products, people pay their Botox fees directly, and not through insurance companies, reducing investors' worries over reimbursement.

Kythera expects to have several candidates enter clinical trials by the end of this year, as its preclinical stage programs continue. Its pipeline includes the injectable ATX-101 for adipolytic (fat cell removal) therapy, which is ready to enter Phase I trials. Preclinical and research-stage programs include ATX-103 for photoaging (wrinkle formation and general sun damage), ATX-104 for dermal contouring, ATX-105 for topical neuromodulation and ATX-106 for topical immunomodulation. The company is keeping mum about the science of its products, as several patents remain pending.

In addition to its current pipeline, the company is in negotiations to in-license two undisclosed clinical dermatology programs. Kythera has no intention to partner any of its products.

"With these programs, you could put relatively small sales forces on the ground," Munshi said.

For the last year, Kythera has existed as a virtual company with only 12 employees and has contracted out its research work, keeping its costs down - another plus for investors. The company's attractiveness also may have something to do with the slice of the dermatology market it has chosen to pursue.

"I think you can break up the dermatology business into three buckets," Munshi said.

The first bucket includes devices, such as lasers. Dusa Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Wilmington, Mass., falls into that category with its Levulan Photodynamic Therapy technology, approved to treat pre-cancerous actinic keratoses. The second bucket contains branded generics, reformulations or new formulations of existing drugs, and companies such as Dermic Laboratories, a division of Paris-based Sanofi Aventis, are found here.

"There's a final [section] of the market, which is for truly novel therapeutics" emerging in the field of dermatology, Munshi said, "and there's very few [companies, aside from Kythera] in that third bucket."

In addition to Munshi, Kythera has three other co-founders: President and CEO Keith Leonard, Chief Science Officer Nathaniel David and Chief Medical Officer Jay Birnbaum. With the financing, Kythera is adding three new board members, including Dennis Fenton, executive vice president of operations at Amgen Inc., of Thousand Oaks, Calif.; David Schnell, managing director at Prospect Venture Partners; and Robert Nelsen, managing director at ARCH Venture Partners.

Fenton, notably, worked at one time with Leonard and Munshi at Amgen and is considered a valuable addition to the board, Munshi said.

"He's not a super high-profile guy industrywide," he said, "but he's one of the true pioneers of biotechnology," having worked at New York-based Pfizer Inc. 25 years ago before joining the Amgen start-up. "He's been at Amgen from the early, early, early days, when Amgen was in trailers."