By Karen Pihl-Carey

ICAgen Inc. completed its largest private placement, raising $19 million to advance its ion channel technology into the clinic.

The private company expects to have its first three products in clinical development by this time next year. The financing also will help ICAgen, of Research Triangle Park, N.C., build up its drug discovery pipeline and possibly move into the public sector in 2001, said Ezra Felker, ICAgen¿s manager of corporate development.

Alta Partners, of San Francisco, and Chase Capital Partners, of New York, led the venture investors in the $19 million financing. Existing investors included Venrock Associates, of New York, Gutrafin and Hoegh Invest AS. New investors were Swiss-based New Medical Technologies and the Japanese firm Fugijin.

¿Certainly, we were very pleased with the results of the financing,¿ Felker said. ¿The biotech environment is not looked upon favorably. However, our experience is if you have a compelling story and track record, financing is not that difficult.¿

The seven-year-old company has raised $31 million to date. Its first significant venture financing was in 1997 when it raised $5.7 million, Felker said.

In addition to the investor money, ICAgen received a second equity investment from Abbott Laboratories, of Abbott Park, Ill., in order to continue their collaboration related to the ion channel technology. ICAgen also has a collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., of New York. Both agreements were initiated in 1997.

¿We¿re currently working with Abbott Laboratories to develop a product for urinary incontinence and with Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop a product for atrial fibrillation,¿ Felker told BioWorld Today. ¿I can¿t comment on the exact stage of those products, but we are very hopeful that they will enter clinical trials next year.¿

A third product that is not partnered could enter the clinic soon as a therapeutic for a hematological disorder.

Felker said ICAgen is in negotiations for a third major collaboration that could provide the company significant capital. But even without another collaboration, the $19 million should last the company well over two years, he said.

Over the past year, ICAgen received an exclusive license from Rockefeller University for a novel method of screening potential drug candidates that modulate ion channels, as well as one from the Research Foundation of State University of New York for novel ion channel genes. It entered into a research and development collaboration with Incyte Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., to create an ion channel gene expression microarray. ICAgen also entered into an agreement with Rhone-Poulenc Agro, of Lyons, France, to exchange focused compound libraries for screening.

And in October, the company acquired all of Axys Pharmaceuticals¿ ion channel technology. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 20, 1999, p. 1.)

Ion channels are proteins found on the cell membrane that regulate the flow of ions in and out of the cell. They affect all physiological processes in the body. ICAgen has discovery programs in central nervous system, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, urinary and immunological disorders.