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June 20, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Rib-X Pharmaceuticals Raises
$50 Million in Series C Financing
NEW HAVEN, Conn., June 20 /PRNewswire/
-- Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a
privately-held biopharmaceutical company
focused on designing and developing
next-generation antibiotics, today
announced that it has raised $50 million
in
Series C Preferred Stock financing.
The round was led by existing investor
Warburg Pincus, the global private
equity investment firm. This latest
round
of financing brings the total amount
raised by the company, since its
inception in 2001, to $123 million.
In addition to Warburg Pincus, participants
in the financing included
existing investors: ABS Ventures,
Axiom Venture Partners, Cardinal Partners,
EuclidSR Partners, Oxford Bioscience
Partners and S.R. One, Limited. Two
new
investors joined the round: MedImmune
Ventures, Inc. and Radius Ventures.
In
conjunction with the financing Dr.
Wayne T. Hockmeyer, President of MedImmune
Ventures and Chairman of MedImmune,
Inc., will join the Rib-X Board of
Directors, bringing the total number
of board members to nine.
"I am gratified by the interest
in Rib-X from these distinguished
new
investors and am particularly proud
of the support shown by our existing
shareholders," said Dr. Susan
Froshauer, President and Chief Executive
Officer
of Rib-X. "These new funds will
fuel the advancement of our two active
clinical-stage programs and further
the build out of our pipeline of new
antibiotic clinical candidates derived
from the company's proprietary high-
resolution x-ray crystallography and
computational chemistry technologies."
"In the last three years, Rib-X
has transitioned from a promising,
technology platform venture to a leading,
clinical-stage antibiotics company,"
commented Stewart Hen, a Warburg Pincus
managing director. "The company
now
has important products in development
to treat the serious unmeet need of
drug-resistant bacteria in both the
hospital and outpatient settings.
We
believe Rib-X is positioned to redefine
the antibiotics landscape in the
future with novel drugs from its proprietary
engine: drugs that could not
readily be developed using traditional
approaches to antibiotic drug
discovery."
About Rib-X Pharmaceuticals,
Inc.
Rib-X Pharmaceuticals is a product-driven
small molecule drug discovery
and development company focused on
the structure-based design of new
classes
of antibiotics. The company's underlying
drug discovery engine capitalizes
on
its proprietary high-resolution crystal
structure of the 50S subunit of the
ribosome, which performs an essential
role in the fundamental process of
protein synthesis. Many known, commercially
valuable antibiotics bind to the
50S, including those used to treat
both community-acquired and hospital-
acquired pathogens. The company's
integrated research strategy, which
combines
state of the art, proprietary computational
analysis, x-ray crystallography,
medicinal chemistry, microbiology
and biochemistry, allows it to rapidly
synthesize new agents designed to
avoid typical antibiotic resistance
mechanisms. Rib-X's iterative intelligent
engine has yielded several
distinctive new antibiotic classes.
Its most advanced program, the Rï?£-01
program is in Phase I as an oral/IV
agent to treat serious hospital- Gram-
positive infections. For more information
on the company, the ribosome and the
Rib-X mission, please visit the company
website at www.rib-x.com.
For Additional Information:
Rx Communications Group
Rhonda Chiger (investors)
917-322-2569
Judith Sylk-Siegel (media)
917-322-2164
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