Replidyne Inc. raised $13 million in Series A financing to further its focus on the discovery and development of new antimicrobial drugs.

The Louisville, Colo., company is based on the discoveries of its founder, Charles McHenry, of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

“We’re in the drug discovery process, now identifying leads,” said President, CEO and Director Kenneth Collins, also a co-founder of the company. The other co-founder is Nebojsa Janjic, vice president of research and development.

Before joining Replidyne in January, Collins was president of Pegasus Technology Ventures in Boulder, Colo. Earlier, he was an executive vice president and chief financial officer of Synergen Inc. He was with Synergen from 1983 until its acquisition by Amgen Inc. in 1994.

Replidyne is taking a different approach to attacking bacteria than those who developed all the marketed antibiotics, Collins said. That approach involves inhibiting bacterial DNA replication. The drug discovery technology includes the DNA replication process as a target, multiplicative target screening, parallel target screening and deconvolution and secondary screens.

“What we’ve done is set up the DNA replication machinery in a high-throughput screening format to find compounds that inhibit bacterial DNA replication,” Collins said. “The near-term goal would be to have compounds that show efficacy in animal models sometime next year.”

The money raised should carry the company through the end of 2003, he said, and explained that “good ideas and good management” can carry companies through a difficult fund-raising climate.

“We felt we got a good reception based on the science,” Collins said.

The money also will enable Replidyne to add to its team. There are 10 employees now, but Collins said he will be adding to the scientific staff to move the drug discovery process forward. Specifically, the number of employees is expected to grow to about 40.

HealthCare Ventures was the lead investor in the financing. Other investors were Sequel Venture Partners, of Boulder; Morganthaler Ventures, of Menlo Park, Calif.; and Johnson & Johnson Research and Development LLC.