By Kim Coghill

Washington Editor

The Medicines Company Inc. (TMC), maker of the therapeutic Angiomax, said Monday it expects to net $41.8 million in a private placement slated to pay for clinical trials and other commercialization expenses.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company was formed in 1996 and launched its first product, Angiomax, in December, four month after its initial public offering. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 9, 2000, and Dec. 19, 2000.)

¿We were very pleased to be able to execute this deal very rapidly with some very high-quality investors,¿ said Peyton Marshall, TMC¿s chief financial officer. ¿We were in and out of the market in 24 hours and the deal was oversubscribed.¿

Angiomax (bivalirudin) is approved for use in the treatment of patients with unstable angina undergoing coronary balloon angioplasty.

The company said it will sell about 4 million shares of newly issued common stock to both new and existing shareholders at $11 per share, representing an 8.8 percent discount to the 10-day average trading price of the company¿s common stock. Robertson Stephens Inc. is the lead placement agent.

TMC¿s stock (NASDAQ:MDCO) Monday closed at $14.14, up 14 cents.

Prior to the offering, TMC had 30.4 million shares outstanding and $60 million in available cash.

In its IPO in August, TMC sold 6 million shares at $16 each to raise a total of $96 million, about 28 percent more than initially expected.

Marshall said the company is involved in other clinical programs with Angiomax including the REPLACE study of the product in angioplasty. Enrollment in Part I of the study is completed and the second part is about to get under way, Marshall said.

In addition, Angiomax is being examined in patients presenting with acute myocardial infarction in the HERO-2 trial, in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery without the use of bypass pump, and in patients undergoing angioplasty with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and thrombosis.

Marshall said the HERO-2 trial should be completed soon and results should be announced in September. A supplemental NDA filing is expected sometime after that.

A second product in development, CTV-05, is a proprietary biotherapeutic agent with a range of potential applications in the treatment of gynecological and reproductive infections. It is in Phase II studies.

Meanwhile, the company reported $1.9 million in first-quarter sales of Angiomax, which is beyond expectations. Mara Goldstein, executive director of CIBC World Markets Corp. in New York, said sales were expected to be $1.25 million to $1.5 million.

Marshall said the company has 65 employees selling the product, some from sales partner Innovex Inc., a subsidiary of Quintiles Transnational Corp.

¿When you are selling in hospitals in the first quarter, there is a lot of work to do initially in terms of both making clinicians aware of the clinical profile, and working with doctors and pharmacists in getting the drug available, hospital by hospital,¿ he said.