By Mary Welch

Idun Pharmaceuticals Inc. raised $7.42 million in a private placement designed to fund and accelerate the company's internal drug program, particularly IDN-6556 for acute alcoholic hepatitis.

"This allows us to have the cash to carry us through the next couple of years so we can accelerate our own clinical trials," said Steven Mento, president and CEO of the La Jolla, Calif.-based company. "This will last us at least two years. We wanted to have the cash on hand before starting the trials. It sounds so obvious but that's not always the case."

Mento said the company plans to file its first investigational new drug application early next year on IDN-6556. "IDN-6556 represents a new class of drugs, of protease inhibitors that target the caspase enzymes that trigger programmed cell death," he said. "Although other companies, in addition to Idun, appear to be developing caspase inhibitors, there are no drugs in clinical testing today that target the apoptotic caspases."

While the company intends to keep U.S. rights to this compound, Mento confirmed the company is looking at partners to market it internationally. About 85,000 people annually are hospitalized in the U.S. with this condition.

The financing was led by the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., of Boston, a new investor. Other participants included Venrock Associates, of New York; Accel Partners, of San Francisco; Institutional Venture Partners, of Menlo Park, Calif.; ARCH Venture Fund, of Chicago; and Delphi Ventures, of Menlo Park.

"You always want more but this was the minimum that we needed," Mento said. "When we reached our number we decided to just close it out rather than keep on going."