Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc. is looking to move its first product into the clinic, and plans to with $30.4 million it raised in a Series D round of financing.

"This [funding] is to get our first product into the clinic, which will be a Gram-positive antibiotic for hospital use," said Thomas Bigger, president and CEO of Boston-based Paratek. "In addition, [we'll use the money] to move our MAR program further along."

Although he classified the current venture-finance environment as "not the most easy of times," Bigger said he felt his company got a fair valuation.

"I'd hate to be starting out right now, let's put it that way," he said. "We were very lucky in that Novartis BioVentures stepped up to the plate and led this round."

Novartis BioVentures, of Basel, Switzerland, was joined by new investors HBM BioVentures AG, of Zurich, Switzerland; POD Holdings, of Stockholm, Sweden; China Development Industrial Bank, of Taiwan; Bioveda Capital, of Singapore; Wheatley Medtech Partners, of New York; and GeneChem Therapeutic Ventures, of Montreal. Previous investors also active in the Series D round included Lombard Odier & Cie, of Geneva; BankInvest, of Copenhagen, Denmark; Bio Fund, of Helsinki, Finland; and Nomura International plc, of London.

The institutional investors with the largest holdings in the company are BioFund, Nomura and Lombard Odier, Bigger told BioWorld Today, although he qualified that by saying all investors in the company have equity of "roughly the same amount."

The $30.4 million - expected to last at least two years, Bigger said - gives Paratek a raised-to-date total of about $64 million. It closed a $20 million round in June 2000 and said at the time that an initial public offering could very well be the company's next financing move. Thanks to an unkind market, Paratek sought funds privately instead, and now, like a lot of companies, it sits watchful and waiting. (See BioWorld Today, June 28, 2000.)

"Our intent would be to do an IPO, but I put a lot of caveats on that one, as you can imagine," Bigger said.

Paratek's focus on infectious diseases is driven by two programs: the TET Project and the MAR Project. TET, or the tetracycline resistance project, is based on medicinal chemistry with the plan of overcoming resistance in microbes. MAR, or the Multiple Antibiotic Resistance project, is based on pathogen genomics and aims to exploit the multiple antibiotic resistance operon that controls sets of genes in several disease-causing Gram-negative bacteria.

The Gram-positive antibiotic, called PTK0796 at this point, is expected to enter the clinic in the fourth quarter, Bigger said. Paratek "hopes to identify a second compound from the tetracycline program, probably in the third quarter," Bigger said, and plans to develop a product for respiratory tract infection for community-based afflictions. If all goes well, Paratek would enter the clinic with that product, which is expected to be orally administered, in the first quarter or half of next year, Bigger said.

In July 1999, Paratek entered a deal with London-based Glaxo Wellcome plc (now GlaxoSmithKline plc) worth up to $95 million to Paratek to develop a resistance-overcoming version of tetracycline. (See BioWorld Today, July 29, 1999.)

Privately held Paratek is seeking another such partner, for either of its programs. Bigger said news announcing a completed deal in the MAR Project area could come as soon as six to 12 months from now; for the Tet Project, a six- to nine-month range is anticipated.

"We think we are in the stage now for partnering," he said.