Taking advantage of a rising share price owing to positive Phase III data released last week on its multiple sclerosis product, Fampridine-SR, Acorda Therapeutics Inc. is bringing in $31.5 million through a private stock sale.

The Hawthorne, N.Y.-based firm entered a definitive purchase agreement to issue shares priced at $9.75 each, with proceeds going to support sales and marketing activities, preclinical and clinical work and general corporate purposes.

Shares of Acorda (NASDAQ:ACOR) closed at $10.50 Wednesday, down $1.

The company's stock has continued to climb since last Monday's spike on positive Phase III results showing that Fampridine-SR enabled patients with multiple sclerosis to walk with less difficulty. Because existing MS treatments don't address improvements to mobility, those data quickly grabbed the attention of Wall Street and boosted Acorda's share price by $6.28, or 282 percent, to close at $8.50. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 26, 2006.)

Whether data from the Phase III study will be enough to warrant a new drug application remains to be seen. The company expects to schedule a meeting with the FDA to discuss its next move.

As of June 30, Acorda had a cash position of $24.2 million, "which we projected would take us to the middle of 2007," Ron Cohen, president and CEO, told BioWorld Today. With the recent financing, "we clearly expect that to last longer," he added, but declined to provide specific guidance on cash flow.

Acorda has one marketed product: Zanaflex capsules (tizanidine hydrochloride), a drug that the company markets with a 32-member sales staff to neurologists for patients suffering painful spasms and muscle spasticity associated with conditions such as MS or spinal cord injury that damage the nervous system.

Beyond Fampridine-SR, its development pipeline includes three preclinical biologics aimed at the CNS space.

Chondroitinase, a bacterial enzyme, has shown promise in animal models in promoting the "growth of new nerve connections and increasing plasticity in the nerve system following injury," Cohen said. "We're quite interested in moving that to the clinic."

Acorda also is developing neuregulins, a class of naturally occurring protein growth factors, which was licensed in 2002 from Cambridge, UK-based CeNeS Ltd. The most advanced of those is glial growth factor-2, which Cohen said has the potential to repair myelin in the nervous system, and also appears to protect cardiac muscle tissue. The company is collaborating with the Mayo Clinic to bring a third preclinical candidate into human studies. That program involves monoclonal antibodies, licensed from the clinic, that have demonstrated in animal models an ability to repair myelin damage.

Acorda, which went public in February through a $33 million initial public offering priced at $6 per share, reported a net loss of $2.9 million, or 15 cents per share, for the quarter ending June 30. (See BioWorld Today, Feb. 13, 2006.)

In other financing news:

• Dynavax Technologies Corp., of Berkeley, Calif., priced a common stock offering of 6.2 million shares at $4.40 per share for about $27 million in gross proceeds. All shares of the common stock offered by Dynavax are being sold pursuant to a shelf registration statement. Dynavax has granted underwriters in the offering an option to purchase up to 930,000 shares to cover overallotments. The offering is expected to close on Oct. 10. Pacific Growth Equities LLC acted as the sole underwriter for this offering. Dynavax's stock (NASDAQ:DVAX) rose 56 cents, or 12.7 percent, to close at $4.96.

• Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics BV, of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, closed a €22 million (US$28 million) Series A round with ABN AMRO Capital/Life Sciences, Advent Venture Partners, Gilde Healthcare Partners and Crédit Agricole Private Equity participating. AMT has a pipeline of gene therapies in clinical and preclinical development. The new funds will be used to take the clinical development of AMT's lead product AMT-011, for lipoprotein lipase deficiency, from Phase II through to registration.