Israel's D-Pharm Raises $6 million From Placing

D-Pharm of Israel has successfully completed a $6 million privateplacement, which it plans to use to accelerate development of novel drugs for the treatment of epilepsy, cardiac ischemia, stroke, cancer and viral diseases.

The company was founded in 1993 by its president and chief executive Alex Kozak, a neurobiochemist, with support from the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. The company attracted its first venture capital investment of $2 million in 1995, and claims to have the support of some of the world's leading venture capital groups.

D-Pharm is developing novel drugs based on its proprietary Regulated Activation of Products technology platform. "RAP technology enables drugs to be activated only within the cells affected by disease, substantially diminishing the adverse reactions caused when drugs also activate within healthy cells," commented Dr Kozak. The company is applying RAP to improve a variety of drugs.