Morrisville-based drug development firm Addrenex continues to parlay start-up loan help from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center into multi-million-dollar outside investment.
Founded in 2006 with the help of $160,000 in loans from the Biotechnology Center, Addrenex has announced its second major drug-development deal with Atlanta-based Sciele Pharma that could potentially put $27 million more into the Addrenex coffers.
The firms will co-develop a drug that could target both hypertension and menopausal flushing, with Sciele picking up the tab for development plus royalties if it's approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Last July Sciele bought a $6 million equity stake in Addrenex -- and the right to increase that share by 10 percent. Sciele also agreed in that deal to make regulatory milestone payments of up to $11 million, and royalty payments to Addrenex on product sales, for an experimental treatment for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.