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December 2009

 



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CURE Member News Digest

Cara Presents at CURE/Yale BioHaven Series
 


 

     Inaugurating the 2009-2010 CURE/Yale BioHaven Entrepreneurship seminar series was a presentation October 21 by Cara Therapeutics Inc. Cara is an emerging biotechnology company, based in Shelton, focused on developing novel therapeutics to treat human diseases associated with pain and inflammation.

Introduced by Paul Pescatello, president and CEO of CURE, the speaker was Derek Chalmers, Ph.D., D.Sc., who is president and CEO of Cara.

Cara's most advanced patented compound, CR845, is currently undergoing Phase 2 clinical testing for acute pain and pruritis. CR845 belongs to a class of molecules that activate peripheral opioid receptors present on sensory nerves, but are also largely excluded from the brain. Such compounds are thought to have the potential to provide pain relief (peripheral opioid analgesia) without producing significant central nervous system side effects, such as respiratory depression, nausea, and sedation. Cara aims to develop a future pipeline of first-in-class molecules at novel analgesic and anti-inflammatory targets using its proprietary drug screening technology.

The company announced in July 2008 that it had closed on $12.3 million of funding in addition to $24 million of Series C financing completed in 2007. To date, the company has raised $42 million in equity-based financing and aims to partner its novel analgesics with suitable development and marketing partners after clinical proof-of-concept.

 
According to Cara, there are about 53 million surgeries performed in the United States each year that require drugs for post-operative pain, and over half of these patients still experience inadequate pain relief.

The inflammatory conditions of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis affect approximately 20 million Americans.

Approximately 26 million patients are affected worldwide with neuropathic pain, a hyperalgesic pain condition resulting from dysfunction of the peripheral or central nervous system.

Cara has developed two peripheral kappa agonists, CR845 and CR665, which, the company says,  display unmatched peripheral selectivity in animal models when compared to first generation kappa compounds. Both compounds are intrinsically poor at penetrating the blood-brain barrier, which decreases the likelihood of side effects mediated by the central nervous system.

The company website is at <http://www.caratherapeutics.com/>.

 

 
 
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