By Brady Huggett

Ambit Biosciences Corp. completed a $10 million Series B round of financing and will use it to continue its quest of discovering and providing validated targets using its ProteomeScan technology.

¿We¿ll use the funds for growing the company and furthering the technology,¿ said Scott Salka, CEO of San Diego-based Ambit. ¿This $10 million will last the company through the end of next year. In that time, we plan to expand from proof of concept to establish broad utility for the platform.¿

Ambit opened its doors in June 2000. Since then, it has moved into a new, 19,000-square-foot facility just ¿down the road¿ from its previous 5,000-square-foot ¿incubation space,¿ Salka said, and added that he and Ambit¿s other 26 employees are ¿like rocks banging around in a can¿ in their larger home. But that shouldn¿t last as the company is looking to add three employees by 2002 and about 12 more by the time 2003 rings in.

Ambit raised $2 million in its seed round completed in December, giving the company $12 million raised to date. The current receding economy presented somewhat of a hurdle concerning fund raising, Salka said.

¿It was a lot of work,¿ he said. ¿There is a lot of money out there ¿ all these venture firms have raised enormous amounts of funds, but people have been hesitant to deploy the capital. It was a healthy challenge for a start-up, but we were successful and we¿re proud of that.¿

The investment was led by Forward Ventures, of San Diego, and included Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund LP, of New York; Avalon Ventures, of San Diego; and Baker-Tisch Investments, of New York.

¿It¿s a very seasoned group of biotechnology investors,¿ Salka said. ¿But with the whole notion of chemistry-directed drug discovery, if you can lay out a cogent story for telling that, you can attract investors.¿

Privately held Ambit¿s story begins at Yale in David Austin¿s chemistry department laboratory. The company was founded by Austin, now chairman of Ambit¿s scientific advisory board; David Lockhart, president, a director and chief scientific officer at Ambit; and Kevin Kinsella, chairman. The company secured an exclusive license to the technology developed in Austin¿s lab and has since advanced its development.

¿It¿s a reverse screening technology,¿ Salka said. ¿We take a molecule that has interesting biological, physiological, therapeutically relevant activity and we use that compound to identify the protein target that is modulated by that compound to elicit that activity. But we don¿t just pick random molecules; we pick molecules that are known to induce different therapeutic affects.¿

This technology will be applied in two ways, Salka said.

¿We intend to, over the long term, develop and market our own therapeutics,¿ he said. ¿But there are more than 100 small-molecule drugs that people don¿t know how they work. What we see as our most significant opportunity is to exploit those molecules and use that target information to develop new and improved drugs. The other near-term opportunity is to use our technology to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and use their discovery compounds to determine the mechanism of action.¿

Goals for the upcoming year for Ambit include the promulgation of partnerships with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and also to begin work with some of the compounds on the market that do not have a known target.

¿This funding enables the company to retain and attract the scientists we need to accomplish the objectives I¿ve explained,¿ Salka said. ¿And we have a number of drugs we are putting through the screening process ¿ this allows us to do that over the next 12 months.¿

Sandy Madigan, Ambit¿s vice president, corporate development, served as a consultant to Ambit before he joined the team and helped broker the technology license from Yale. He was previously vice president, corporate development, at X-Ceptor Therapeutics Inc., of San Diego, and was there when the company signed its potential $45 million deal with Tokyo-based Sankyo Co. Ltd. But after having an insider¿s look at the beginnings of Ambit, he jumped ship. (See BioWorld Today, April 10, 2001.)

¿The bottom line is the technology has such enormous potential that, if everything breaks right, it was impossible for me not to accept,¿ Madigan said.