Ambrx Inc. is hitting the ground running with $12.5 million from a Series A round of financing along with an exclusive license to its technology from the Scripps Research Institute.

The San Diego-based company also rounded out its executive team with the appointment of CEO Richard DiMarchi and Chief Scientific Officer Thomas Daniel. DiMarchi was one of Ambrx's founders, along with Peter Schultz, its chairman, and Troy Wilson, its chief business officer.

It was founded on technology developed for nearly two decades by Schultz and his colleagues at Scripps. Designed to allow for the genetic engineering of proteins with new amino-acid building blocks, beyond the common 20 amino acids found in nature, its application results in the biosynthesis of proteins with new physical, chemical and pharmacological properties.

"About 18 months ago, it became clear to us that there was potentially a commercial opportunity that we should investigate," Wilson told BioWorld Today. "We got Dr. DiMarchi involved and the three of us began to define what the business opportunity would be and what the scientific objectives were going to have to be."

The trio opened Ambrx's doors in April, and soon after tapped Daniel for his clinical development background. Most recently, he had worked as the vice president of research for Amgen Inc., of Thousand Oaks, Calif. DiMarchi also brings protein commercialization experience to the table, given his most recent post as the group vice president for biotechnology and product development at Lilly Research Laboratories, a unit of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. Schultz is a professor of chemistry at Scripps in La Jolla, Calif., as well as a director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. Wilson previously worked as the vice president of business development and the general counsel at the institute, part of Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis AG.

"With that, we felt that we had the team, technology and commercial opportunity - all the stars were lined up - and we went ahead with the financing after founding the company," Wilson said, adding that the funding would last about two years. "We have combined the strength of medicinal chemistry, the ability to incorporate building blocks that give you enhanced properties, with the commercial engine of protein biosynthesis."

Ambrx's early initiatives will apply the technology to proteins that already possess clinical data, but also well-established liabilities. Wilson declined to specify initial therapeutic areas of interest to the company, though he noted the technology is more focused on improving the properties of molecules rather than on specific therapeutic areas.

The technology could be used to make proteins orally available or more stable, allowing for storage without refrigeration. Ambrx's programs remain in preclinical development, with eventual plans to move products through more extensive development in partnership with larger collaborators.

"As a small biotech company, you really have to partner for a lot of reasons, such as financial, sophistication and market validation," Wilson said. "We're not going to try to do cookie-cutter deals, but we'd rather build several fairly focused relationships to bring value to that."

The company's financing round included 5AM Ventures, of Menlo Park, Calif., and Tavistock Life Sciences, of San Diego. Both venture capital firms also gained seats on Ambrx's board, including John Diekman, 5AM's managing partner, and Shehan Dissanayake, Tavistock's CEO.

With its senior management team and several other key employees in place, Ambrx continues to recruit scientific and commercialization staff. Wilson said the company would grow to 25 to 35 employees by the end of next year.

"We're very focused on demonstrating both the scientific and commercial potential for the technology," he added. "Rather than telling people what we're going to do, we'd rather do it and let the data speak for us."