Associate

DOV Pharmaceutical Inc. closed a $15 million private placement of stock and warrants to a group of funds managed by OrbiMed Advisors LLC.

DOV, of Hackensack, N.J., sold to OrbiMed, of New York, about 1.4 million shares at $10.50 per share and three-year warrants to purchase 392,857 shares at $16 per share. DOV also granted the investors the right to nominate a director to DOV's board in the next six months.

If the warrants were exercised in full, it would mean about another $6.3 million for DOV. DOV's stock (NASDAQ:DOVP) rose 86 cents Thursday to close at $12.39.

At the end of the first quarter, DOV had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $56.7 million. It posted a net loss for the quarter of $2.6 million.

At the top of DOV's pipeline is NBI-34060, an insomnia product licensed to San Diego-based Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., which is developing it as indiplon and has it in eight Phase III trials. In April, Neurocrine said a Phase III trial showed an immediate-release formulation of the drug achieved statistically significant results in primary and secondary endpoints of sleep initiation over about a month. Also, there was no evidence of next-day effects in the 200 chronic primary insomnia adult patients involved in the trials. DOV stands to receive royalties on sales. (See BioWorld Today, April 23, 2003.)

It also has ocinaplon, thought to selectively modulate a specific subset of GABA-A receptors that DOV believes are involved in the mediation of anxiety, in a Phase II generalized anxiety disorder trial. Bicifadine is in a Phase II pain trial, and the company has its depression drug, DOV 216,303, in a Phase I trial. It also has several products in preclinical work in the areas of depression, panic disorder, stress urinary incontinence, attention deficit disorder and Parkinson's disease.