Advancing its focus from research to drug development, Cetek Corp. raised $10 million in its fourth financing round to help build a development pipeline targeting cancer and infection.

Marlborough, Mass.-based Cetek, which has a drug discovery platform based on its high-throughput capillary eletrophoresis (CE assay) screening technology and analytical chemistry approach, has worked with other companies in a "collaborative and service mode," said Barry Berkowitz, Cetek president and CEO. "But, over the past year or two, there has been an increasing focus on internal research," he told BioWorld Today, adding that this financing will "allow us to build a development portfolio both internally and through the acquisition of later-stage compounds."

To date, Cetek has raised about $60 million. The latest round is expected to take the company into 2007.

Berkowitz, who joined Cetek in December from Medford, Mass.-based Scion Pharmaceuticals Inc., said he was drawn first to Cetek by its core CE technology, which is aimed at addressing some of the difficulties in high-throughput screening of proteomic and genomic targets, such as protein-protein interaction, protein-nucleic acid interaction and orphan drug targets. CE assays also "interface with a broad diversity" of drug sources that include the company's natural product libraries. Cetek will continue leveraging the CE technology while putting together its own drug programs. It is starting development with compounds to treat cancer and infectious disease. Both are areas that "lend themselves to the CE screening technology," Berkowitz said.

For example, the CE assay can help researchers in antiviral development by accessing the regulation of transcription and virus life cycles of potential targets.

"Later this year and early next year, we'll be talking to other companies about partnering our compounds," he said, adding that the company likely would "keep one program for ourselves, taking the drug all the way through Phase II proof of concept."

The recent financing included existing investors in Cetek: Argonaut Private Equity, of Tulsa, Okla.; Ventry Industries LLC; Gainesborough Investments, of Lexington, Mass.; James Waters; and Stata Ventures, of Boston. Cetek also formed a scientific advisory board led by Barry Karger, the James L. Waters chair in analytical chemistry and biological analysis at Northeastern University, along with K. Frank Austen, James Griffin, Charles Cooney, and Martin Hirsch.

In other financings news:

Corgenix Medical Corp., of Denver, closed two private placements to raise gross proceeds of $3.4 million. The first consisted of $2 million in Series A convertible preferred stock priced at $1 per share, and the second consisted of $1.5 million in aggregate principal amount of secured convertible term notes due 2008. Ascendiant Securities LLC, of Irvine, Calif., served as exclusive placement agent.

Inovio Biomedical Corp., of San Diego, completed its previously announced financing of $15.8 million through the sale of stock to investors that included Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck & Co. Inc. and San Diego-based Vical Inc. Shares were priced at $2.40 each, and the company also issued five-year warrants to purchase 35 percent of the number of shares sold in the offering at $2.93 per share. Proceeds will be used for working capital, including the support of clinical trials for Inovio's lead product, the Selective Electrochemical Tumor Ablation System, and for general corporate purposes. Thomas Weisel Partners, of New York, served as placement agent.