Privately held Critical Therapeutics Inc. raised $56 million in a Series B financing that will help the company develop its pipeline of anti-inflammatory products, including its lead drug for asthma.

"This comfortably takes us through commercialization of the product, which our present timelines put at the end of 2005," said Paul Rubin, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company's president and CEO. Rubin added that the money would probably carry the company all the way into 2006.

The financing not only will help Critical Therapeutics (CTI) accelerate its clinical and preclinical development programs, but it also will help the company expand its research initiatives and create a sales and marketing infrastructure, Rubin said.

According to BioWorld Snapshots, the Series B financing is the largest private round by a biotech company this year.

CTI in-licensed its lead drug, which already is approved for asthma but in an oral form that is administered four times daily. The company has rights for a sustained-release version, which it calls CTI-02, and is developing both an oral and intravenous form that would be administered twice daily. All of the clinical work in asthma is complete, Rubin told BioWorld Today. The company expects to begin clinical trials in emphysema sometime in 2004. A launch of CTI-02 in asthma is expected by the end of 2005.

CTI has raised about $75 million in venture funds to date. Its anti-inflammatory products include two clinical programs and three preclinical programs that target acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. The products include the lead drug, as well as a cytoprotective drug, CTI-01, to reduce trauma-related vascular and organ damage.

"We finished single-dose Phase I trials and are moving on to the next phase," Rubin said. He expects CTI-01 to enter Phase II sometime next year.

The company also has a biologic product targeting HMGB-1. It is a pro-inflammatory cytokine to treat severe inflammatory diseases and is partnered with MedImmune Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 1, 2003.)

It also is developing small-molecule and vagal nerve-stimulation approaches to treat inflammation.

Rubin said the company has plans to grow from its current staff of 30 employees to about 50 employees by the end of next year.

"And we're moving into a new 40,000-square-foot facility" in Lexington, Mass., in 2004, he said.

The round was led by Advanced Technology Ventures, of Palo Alto, Calif., and Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., of New Brunswick, N.J. Other investors included MedImmune Ventures, a subsidiary of MedImmune Inc.; Oxford Bioscience Partners, of Boston; HealthCare Ventures LLC, of Cambridge, Mass.; and MPM Capital LP, of Boston.

Jean George, a partner at Advanced Technology Ventures, and Ting Pau Oei, vice president at J&J Development, will join CTI's board of directors.