After raising $10 million from Domain Associates LLC last October, CoDa Therapeutics Inc. completed the second close of its Series A financing with an additional $10 million investment from Domain and GBS Venture Partners Ltd.

According to CEO Brad Duft, the funding will last more than two years - long enough for CoDa to get Phase I/II data in at least two wound healing indications with its lead product, Nexagon.

By the end of the year, CoDa expects to begin dosing patients in a Phase I/II trial evaluating Nexagon's ability to improve eye healing after laser refractive surgery. The trial will enroll approximately 30 patients at one or two clinical sites in New Zealand. About three months after the start of the trial, CoDa plans to initiate a second study in the healing of skin wounds.

Results should come quickly from both trials, since Nexagon will be administered as a one-time topical application. Duft said data would be available "within a week" of dosing. Depending on the pace of patient recruitment, he estimated the studies would each take a couple of months to complete.

Despite CoDa's proximity to the clinic, Duft had to overcome a bias against wound-healing drugs during the fund raising. "When I'd walk in and tell a VC I have a wound-healing anti-sense drug, they'd just groan," he said. "It's like a double-barreled shot to the brain."

James Blair, partner with Domain, said he had a "negative bias" about wound healing, due to past setbacks in the field, but that CoDa's approach was "enough of a departure" from the norm to interest him.

While the traditional wound-healing approach involves up-regulating growth factors such as VEGF or PDGF-B, CoDa's platform technology down-regulates connexins, protein segments involved in intracellular communication. Nexagon is a small anti-connexin43 oligonucleotide that down-regulates the proteins that form gap junctions, reducing an injured cell's ability to send out death signals. The effect is transient, lasting only six to eight hours, after which the body's natural healing processes kick in.

According to Duft, preclinical studies of Nexagon have shown the ability to stop lesion spread, reduce inflammation by 80 percent, block swelling, decrease scarring by 50 percent and double wound closure rates. "So far it has worked in every tissue and every model," he said, including brain, eye, skin and spinal cord tissues as well as models of burns, cuts, incisions, excisions and crush wounds.

Blair noted that CoDa did not have the amount of human data Domain usually looks for, but "what they have is very impressive."

One patient, referred to as "Lucky Luke," is a construction worker in New Zealand who got sprayed in the eye with concrete. When standard treatments failed, Luke was told he could have the eye surgically removed or - if he was lucky - the corneal tissue might grow over it and he would be blind. But his ophthalmologist worked down the hall from CoDa co-founder Colin Green at the University of Auckland, and he had seen the Nexagon preclinical data. They obtained permission from the regulatory authorities to treat Luke with a single dose. Within six days, his epithelium had completely re-grown. He now has 20/20 vision and can drive his car.

In addition to the Nexagon program, CoDa is conducting preclinical studies with Peptagon, another gap junction regulating technology. Peptagon will be applied internally rather than topically for use in stroke and heart attack, and is "still a couple of years away from the clinic," Duft said.

CoDa is based in San Diego but maintains a sister company, Coda Therapeutics (NZ) Ltd., in New Zealand.

In other financing news:

• Adherex Technologies Inc., of Research Triangle Park, N.C., completed its previously announced public offering. The company raised $25 million through the sale of 75.8 million units, each consisting of one common share and one-half of a common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant may be used to acquire one additional common share within three years at a price of 40 cents per share. As a result of the offering, Southpoint Capital Advisors LP now owns or exercises control over 42 percent of the current issued and outstanding common shares. Adherex expects the financing to last into 2008 and support clinical development of cancer drugs ADH-1 (Exherin) and eniluracil, which was licensed from GlaxoSmithKline plc., of London. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 19, 2007.)

• IDM Pharma Inc., of Irvine, Calif., closed a $12.8 million private placement through the sale of 4.5 million shares of common stock at the market price of $2.82 per share. The company also issued warrants for the purchase of approximately 782,500 additional shares of common stock priced at $0.022 per share, with an exercise price of $3.243 per share. The funding will support lead compound Junovan, which completed a Phase III trial in osteosarcoma and is under review for potential approval by both the FDA and EMEA.

• Regimmune Corp., of Tokyo, raised $4.2 million in the first close of a Series B financing. NIF SMBC Ventures Co. Ltd. led the round, with participation by existing investor Japan Asia Investment Co. Ltd. and new investors JAFCO Co. Ltd., Orix Capital Corp., Yasuda Enterprise Development Co. Ltd., New Business Investment Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co. Ltd. and Fund Creation Co. Ltd. Proceeds will be used for preclinical development of RGI-1001 for cedar allergy and RGI-2001 for graft-versus-host disease and autoimmune diseases. Regimmune raised a $1.6 million Series A financing in August and is expanding a subsidiary in Mountain View, Calif.

• Optimer Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, said the underwriters of its recent initial public offering exercised their overallotment option to purchase an additional 1.1 million shares. The shares were purchased from Par Pharmaceutical Companies Inc. at an offering price of $7 per share, and Par received the proceeds. Optimer priced its IPO at $7 per share earlier this month, netting $44.1 million, after fees and expenses, to drive antibiotic clinical trials. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 12, 2007.)

• Vasogen Inc., of Toronto, filed a prospectus supplement with the Ontario Securities Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to add 10 million shares to the amount shareholders may sell in connection with senior convertible notes issued by a Vasogen subsidiary in October 2005. As of Tuesday, the outstanding principal amount owed under the notes was $2.8 million, which Vasogen estimates will be repaid by April 1. The company raised $20.3 million last November through the sale of shares and warrants. (See BioWorld Today, Nov. 10, 2006).

• Theratechnologies Inc., of Montreal, said underwriters in its previously announced bought-deal financing exercised in full their overallotment option to purchase an additional 625,000 shares. That brings the full offering size to 6.9 million shares priced at $8.40 each for gross proceeds of $57.8 million. Funds will be used to support the development of TH9507, which is in Phase III in HIV-associated lipodystrophy, and for working capital purposes. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 21, 2007.)