Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc , a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing new and more effective therapies to treat cancer today announced that it has raised $32 5 million in the final closing of a private placement of common stock and warrants to purchase common stock Proceeds totaling $39 3 million including $6 8 million from prior closings have been raised in this financing and will support the late-stage clinical development of the Company’s lead investigational product CPX-351 cytarabine:daunorubicin Liposome Injection This financing is expected to fully fund the Company’s currently enrolling Phase 3 clinical study as first-line therapy in patients 75 years of age with secondary acute myeloid leukemia AML
The Phase 3 clinical study is designed as a 300 patient randomized controlled study comparing CPX-351 to conventional cytarabine and daunorubicin therapy ) with a primary endpoint of overall survival The Phase 3 study is based on results from a randomized controlled Phase 2b study in newly diagnosed AML patients 75 years of age presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in 2011
The financing was led by Valence Life Sciences LLC Roth Capital Partners LLC and National Securities Corporation acted as co-lead placement agents in connection with the institutional investors and certain accredited investors
Scott Morenstein Managing Director at Valence Life Sciences will be joining the Board of Directors
A total of 10,430,034 shares of common stock were sold at a price of $3 116 per share for aggregate gross proceeds of $32 5 million Warrants to purchase 0 28 shares of common stock were issued for each share of common stock purchased This raise is in addition to the $6 8 million in shares of common stock previously sold to accredited investors by National Securities exclusive of $5 0 million invested by current stockholders of the Company as the Company reported in its Form 10-K report for the year ended December , 2012 An additional 1,923,599 shares of common stock and corresponding warrants were issued at the final closing to certain existing stockholders of the Company who participated in earlier closings of this financing The securities issued in this financing have not been registered under the Securities Act of , as amended and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements
About Valence Life Sciences
Valence Life Sciences is a New York and San Diego-based life sciences venture capital firm founded to focus on clinical development stage private and micro-cap public companies The partners of Valence Life Sciences include Founder Eric W Roberts Managing Director Jay Cecil Founder Dr A Rachel Leheny and Managing Director Scott Morenstein The team currently manages Valence Advantage Life Sciences Fund II and also manages the Caxton Advantage Life Sciences Fund which was formed in 2006 as a joint venture with Caxton Associates the investment firm founded by Bruce Kovner
About Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc
Celator Pharmaceuticals Inc , with locations in Princeton NJ and Vancouver BC is a privately held pharmaceutical company developing new and more effective therapies to treat cancer CombiPlex the company’s proprietary drug ratio technology platform represents a novel approach that identifies molar ratios of drugs that will deliver a synergistic benefit and locks the desired ratio in a nano-scale drug delivery vehicle that maintains the ratio in patients with the goal of improving clinical outcomes The company pipeline includes two clinical stage products CPX-351 a liposomal formulation of cytarabine:daunorubicin for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia and CPX-1 a liposomal formulation of irinotecan:floxuridine for the treatment of colorectal cancer a preclinical stage product CPX-571 a liposomal formulation of irinotecan:cisplatin and multiple research programs including the hydrophobic docetaxel prodrug nanoparticle HDPN formulation being studied by the National Cancer Institute’s Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory For more information please visit the company’s website at a href=”http://www celatorpharma com target=”_blank”>www celatorpharma com
