Diabetes drug developer BioKier has closed on a $1.7 million funding commitment, its first financing from institutional investors.
Broadview Ventures and the American Heart Association’s Science & Technology Accelerator Program joined in the financing, which the company will use to move into early clinical testing of a new oral diabetes treatment. According to a July 19 securities filing that shows the $1.7 million target, Chapel Hill-based BioKier has received $645,000 of the debt financing so far.
BioKier had previously received seed funding from individual investors as well as a Small Business Research loan from the N.C. Biotechnology Center.
BioKier aims to fill the need for diabetes drugs that offer a safer alternative to some currently available products that pose the risk of serious side effects. Some of the currently available diabetes drugs are injectable products, which are less preferable to some patients and more expensive for companies to manufacture.
BioKier is developing a once-a-day pill that is based on understanding the mechanism of the anti-diabetic effects of gastric bypass surgery. This surgery helps people lose weight. But independent of this weight loss effect, the surgery also improves or even resolves diabetes within 80 to 90 percent of obese type 2 diabetes patients, BioKier says. Non-obese diabetes patients also see benefit.
“Funds provided by Broadview and the American Heart Association will allow us to conduct two preliminary clinical trials and initiate very important work on formulation development,” BioKier CEO and scientific founder George Szewczyk said in a statement, “It was gratifying to BioKier that two investors with demonstrated expertise in the cardiovascular disease area and a national investment perspective recognized the potential that BioKier’s approach may offer patients afflicted with diabetes, particularly as it relates to the cardiovascular risk associated with diabetes.”
