Mithridion is a Midwest-based company that has been around for a while, but not longer than its lead drug candidate for Alzheimer’s. You know, it’s kinda crazy keeping up with all these companies and drugs, lots of sneaksters, limited public info, etc, but we’ve had our eye on the industry for a while now so that makes things a little easier.

Anyway, the story goes like this (or so we think): Mithridion was started back in 2005 as a Wisconsin-based spin out. The company managed to secure some funding, but never really had any progress in their research. In fact, it looks like most of the funding was used to buy lab space, lab equipment and pay researchers.

In 2008, the company merged with Cognitive Pharmaceuticals which also has an interesting story. Cognitive’s lead drug had been around for over a decade. The drug was called CDD-0102 and has been in several preclinical animal Alzheimer’s models/studies. Dr. William S. Messer from the University of Toledo had been doing work on this for years as can be seen here, here and here. And here.

Our guess is the company was never able to get off and running and so decided to merge with Mithridion who had management and access to capital (of course this is our guess). Also, Mithridion had people behind it, but no projects. Made sense. Additionally, some of the investors in Mithridion had invested in Cognitive. Could be a mixture of both.

The drug is now renamed MCD-386 and is a a second-generation M1 sub-type selective muscarinic agonist. It started a Phase 1 back in June 08 after a $2.3M B round. The company just recently announced another tranche of $2.M. Either the phase 1 in 08 was not done and all the money went to debt and/or admin/salaries, or it was done, but only half of it (single dose, no multidose pharmacokinetics). Who knows.

Anyway, the mechanism makes sense because there have been many muscarinic agonists studies for AD. The compounds are neurotrophic and have been shown to decrease amyloid depositions in the brain. Xanomeline is one of the more popular ones which Novo dropped from development a while back.

Ultimately, the science here is interesting, but the company has a ways to go.

Management

Trevor M. Twose – CEO

Paul M Weiss – Board Member

Wayne P. Hoss – Board Member

William S. Messer – CSO

Investors

Venture Investors

State of Wisconsin Investment Board

Wisconsin Investment Partners

Rocket Venture Fund

WARF

Rosetta Partners

Biopons, Inc.

Image from klumdesign

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