Durham's Mycovia Wins Center Stage at BIO Investor Forum

Durham’s Mycovia Pharmaceuticals has emerged as the winner over nine finalist life science startups from across the nation vying for recognition in the “Buzz of BIO” Late Stage Leaders competition, part of the BIO Investor Forum taking place in San Francisco in October.

The BIO Investor Forum is an international biotech investor conference focused on early and established private companies as well as emerging public companies. The forum’s 2019 agenda is to analyze investment trends and opportunities for harnessing growth in venture-stage public companies.

Buzz of BIO is a contest that recognizes U.S. life science companies with groundbreaking, early stage technologies with the potential for improving our lives. Mycovia’s win gives it a complimentary presentation opportunity, with free registration, at the BIO Investor Forum (a $6,500 value).

More importantly, the company’s Buzz of BIO win means it gets a big stage to connect with potential investors willing to take the company’s product to the next phase. Mycovia’s lead therapeutic, VT-1161, is an oral drug that addresses recurrent yeast infections in women -- vulvovaginal candidiasis -- and onychomycosis, a common infection of fingernails and toenails.

Noted as an innovation in women’s health, Mycovia’s VT-1161 has received Qualified Infectious Disease Product and Fast Track designations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The designations provide incentives including extended patent protection and expedited regulatory reviews to companies developing new drugs that could satisfy unmet medical needs.

The product candidate’s accolades also qualified Mycovia as a Late Stage Leader in the BIO competition, because VT-1161 has also resulted in Mycovia investments exceeding $25 million. 

Win comes on heels of China collaboration

This BIO recognition comes only a few months after the company announced a collaboration with Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine of China to develop and commercialize VT-1161.

To qualify for the Late Stage Leader grand prize, Mycovia had to show that it was actively developing a therapeutic product intended for FDA review that addresses human health issues, and that it has raised more than $25 million as of July 1, 2019, and is enrolling patients in a company-sponsored clinical trial posted at https://clinicaltrials.gov/. 

The BIO Investor Forum, scheduled for Oct. 22-23 at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, is an annual international conference that brings together bioscience companies and potential investors. Sponsored by the nonprofit Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the forum draws more than 1,000 participants.

Mycovia was founded in 2018, following the acquisition of Viamet Pharmaceuticals and VT-1161 by Raleigh-based NovaQuest Capital Management. NovaQuest manages over $1.8 billion in life science and healthcare company investments. 

Prior to the formation of NovaQuest Capital Management in 2010, many of the company’s partners and senior executives were part of the former NovaQuest business unit at Durham-based Quintiles Transnational Holdings (now IQVIA), a global giant in contract clinical research and data science.