With the close of a $24 million Series A financing, Trevena Inc. capped off a busy few months. Since its founding last November, the Berwyn, Pa.-based start-up has licensed core technology around G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), assembled a management team and now has obtained two to three years worth of funding.

Alta Partners and HealthCare Ventures LLC led the Series A round, which included participation by New Enterprise Associates and Polaris Venture Partners. The lead investors also recruited Trevena's president and CEO, Maxine Gowen, who previously served as senior vice president of GlaxoSmithKline plc's Center of Excellence for External Drug Discovery (CEEDD).

Gowen is no stranger to GPCRs, the large receptor family targeted by an estimated 40 percent of marketed drugs. In late 2006, GSK's CEEDD group signed a deal potentially worth more than $1.2 billion with EPIX Pharmaceuticals Inc. for the discovery and development of drugs targeting four GPCRs. And with hundreds of members in the GPCR family, interest in the field shows no sign of slowing. Earlier this year, Compugen Ltd. and Merck and Co. Inc. teamed up to discover peptides that activate select GPCRs. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 13, 2006, and Jan. 15, 2008.)

Trevena's work focuses on identifying both small molecules and biologics that "either have improved efficacy or are devoid of certain adverse effects" of existing GPCR-targeted drugs, Gowen said. The company initially plans to discover and develop drugs for neurological and cardiovascular disease indications and has "a number of projects at various stages ranging from target validation to preclinical research," she added.

Gowen declined to provide details about Trevena's platform, which was licensed from Duke University Medical Center. The platform is based on the research of founding scientists Robert Lefkowitz, investigator with Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at Duke, and Howard Rockman, chief of cardiovascular medicine at Duke.

Lefkowitz's lab is known for pioneering GPCR research. His team discovered two families of proteins - G protein-coupled receptor kinases and arrestins - that can shut off GPCR activation and activate separate signaling pathways. He was then able to design drug candidates for cardiovascular disease that block harmful GPCR-mediated pathways, like traditional beta-blockers or angiotensin receptor blockers, but that also stimulate potentially beneficial pathways mediated through beta-arrestins.

Rockman also studies the role of GPCRs in cardiovascular disease, specifically how phosphoinositide-3 kinase interacts with beta-adrenergic receptors.

Both scientists serve as consultants to Trevena, and some of the members of their lab teams have joined the company.

In connection with the Series A financing, Farah Champsi, managing director at Alta; Christopher Mirabelli, partner at Healthcare Ventures; Robert Garland, partner at New Enterprise; Terry McGuire, managing partner at Polaris; Ralph Snyderman, chancellor emeritus at Duke; and Gowen joined Trevena's board.

In other financing news:

• Cell Therapeutics Inc., of Seattle, saw its shares fall 42.6 percent Tuesday after it issued notes and restructured its balance sheet. The company said it will raise $35.5 million in proceeds by issuing $51.7 million worth of 9 percent convertible senior notes due 2012 and convertible at $1.41 per share, along with warrants to purchase 7.3 million common shares for $1.41 per share. The company also said it paid certain shareholders $16.2 million to convert $21.5 million worth of preferred stock to common stock. Rodman & Renshaw LLC acted as exclusive placement agent for the offering. Shares of Cell Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CTIC) fell 55 cents, to close at 74 cents.

• Unibioscreen SA, of Brussels, Belgium, raised €5 million (US$7.6 million) from existing investors and plans to raise additional funding this summer. Proceeds will be used to advance lead compounds UNBS1450 and UNBS5162 into cancer clinical trials by mid-2008 and into Phase II trials by late 2009. Additionally, Unibioscreen said Robert Kiss will focus on his role as chief scientific officer and will temporarily pass the post of CEO to Christiane Verhaegen, who also serves as chief financial officer.