Cardiokine: (Vaso)pressin ahead

After closing a $50 million series B round last week, Cardiokine Inc. has now raised a total of $87 million on the strength of a single product: Lixivaptan, a once-shelved hyponatremia candidate in-licensed from Wyeth in 2004. The company plans to start Phase III testing of the selective vasopressin V2 receptor antagonist this summer.

Co-founder and Chairman James Mervis said Cardiokine’s initial goal was to go around "knocking on doors" at big pharma looking for a product around which it could build and finance the company. In 2004, the search turned up a shelved project at WYE (Madison, N.J.) that met Cardiokine’s wish list (see BioCentury, April 19, 2004)...