Athersys Inc. completed a private placement totaling $16.2 million to be used to continue about a dozen projects, which focus on oncology, the central nervous system and inflammation.

The Cleveland-based company sold its common stock at $13 a share, which represents a "modest premium" to its last institutional round in the spring of 2000, when it raised $48 million, President and CEO Gil Van Bokkelen said. (See BioWorld Today, May 9, 2000.)

"There are a lot of people interested in the company, but with the events of last fall, it's created a little bit of a nervous environment," Van Bokkelen said.

The privately held company has raised $100 million since its inception in 1994 and now has about $60 million in cash, which should last the next "several years," he said. The money puts Athersys in the position not only to continue work on its internal drug development efforts, but also to concentrate on the value it is creating through collaborations.

"We have a fairly broad strategy for what we want to do," Van Bokkelen said, explaining that the vision for Athersys is "turning it into one of the world's leading biopharmaceutical companies."

The company's collaborations indicate the breadth of its interests.

Among its projects is the January 2000 collaboration Athersys entered into with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., of New York, for the production of human cell lines expressing six validated drug targets.

In March 2000, the company began a collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation to discover and functionally validate cancer and inflammation targets. (See BioWorld Today, March 12, 2001.)

In October, Athersys and 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Yardley, Pa., entered a collaboration to discover, develop and commercialize small-molecule drugs by screening against targets derived from the G protein-coupled receptor family of proteins. The collaboration already has produced the first validated target in high-throughput screening, and identified hits. The second target is now in screening, Van Bokkelen said. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 30, 2001.)

Athersys is collaborating with Medarex Inc., of Princeton, N.J., to jointly develop 10 or more fully human antibodies as therapeutics for cancer and other diseases using targets identified and contributed by Athersys. Van Bokkelen said the companies have defined two targets for joint development, including one in oncology and one in inflammation. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 17, 2000.)

Van Bokkelen pointed to those collaborations as a key for the company in pursuing multiple product areas instead of being limited to one area of interest.

"We don't feel like we have to do everything internally," he said.

Athersys' research and development program is focused on its two technology platforms: RAGE (Random Activation of Gene Expression) and the SMC (Synthetic Microchromosome) vector system. RAGE allows for gene expression without requiring the cloning of individual genes or the use of cDNA libraries, the company said. SMC is designed to deliver multiple therapeutic genes in gene therapy applications.

New institutional investors included National City Equity Partners, of Cleveland; Greenleaf Capital Management, of Shaker Heights, Ohio; and the Biomedical Sciences Investment Fund of the Singapore Economic Development Board.