Vascular Magnetics to Advance Magnetically Targeted Delivery System

Vascular Magnetics, Inc. recently announced it has raised $7 million in a Series A financing to advance the development of its proprietary, magnetically targeted drug delivery system for the treatment of peripheral artery disease (PAD). Devon Park Bioventures was the sole investor in the financing.

“This financing is an important endorsement of our highly innovative approach to treating peripheral artery disease, a major, growing clinical challenge that affects about 30 million in Europe and North America. At least 10 million patients live in the US,” said Vascular Magnetics Chairman Georges Gemayel, PhD. “Current treatments for PAD such as angioplasty, grafts, and stents, including drug-eluting stents, are not durable, with arterial re-obstruction (restenosis) occurring frequently. Vascular Magnetics’ innovative approach to enhance local drug delivery has great potential to transform PAD treatment by delivering anti-restenotic drugs specifically to diseased artery sites at higher concentrations than are possible with drug eluting stents.”

The company’s system, called Vascular Magnetic Intervention (VMI), combines biodegradable, magnetic drug-loaded particles, a magnetic targeting catheter, and an external device for creating a uniform magnetic field. The field generates high force magnetic gradients in the catheter, so that when the drug-loaded particles are administered, the gradients direct them to the arterial wall. The particles remain in the arterial wall after the catheter is removed and release the drug over a sustained period. The initial product Vascular Magnetics is developing employs paclitaxel, an established anti-restenosis drug that is a component of drug-eluting stents used primarily to treat coronary artery disease. The underlying technology has longer term potential for the targeted delivery of therapeutics to other areas of the body.

“The funds will allow us to complete the preclinical development of the system and conduct an initial clinical trial,” said Richard S. Woodward, PhD, Vascular Magnetics Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer. “We expect to begin the clinical trial in 2014.”

The system is based on research by Vascular Magnetics’ Co-founder and Founding scientist, Robert J. Levy, MD, who holds the William J. Rashkind Endowed Chair in Pediatric Cardiology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is Director of the hospital’s Cardiology Research Laboratory. Dr. Levy and colleagues demonstrated the feasibility of the VMI approach in studies published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“VMI shows great promise for improving outcomes for PAD, and I am delighted that with Devon Park Bioventures’ support this concept is moving forward,” said Dr. Levy.

Vascular Magnetics is developing novel therapeutic products based on the magnetic targeting of drug-loaded biodegradable particles. The company’s first product in development is a treatment for peripheral artery disease that is designed to target anti-restenotic drugs specifically to diseased arterial sites and deliver doses not achievable with a drug eluting stent. The company’s approach, called Vascular Magnetic Intervention (VMI), combines a magnetic targeting catheter, and external magnetic device, along with drug-loaded biodegradable particles. Learn more at www.vascularmagnetics.com.