SironRX locks up $2.3 million funding round

Wound therapy startup SironRX Therapeutics has raised $2.3 million of a possible $2.5 million funding round.

SironRx, which boasts technology pioneered at Cleveland Clinic, plans to use the funding to commence human trials, which the company says could start around the end of the year, according to CEO Rahul Aras, former director of life science commercialization with Cleveland Clinic Innovations.

Investors in the A round include Cleveland-based Early Stage Partners, Cincinnati-based Triathlon Medical Ventures and Boston-based Fletcher Spaght. according to regulatory filings. Aras said he expects SironRX to close on the rest of the round in a “matter of weeks.”

SironRX got its start earlier this year with a $500,000 investment from Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland-based, state-backed venture development group JumpStart.

The technology behind SironRX is also the basis for another company, Juventas Therapeutics, which is pursuing a treatment for cardiovascular disease. The technology is called JVS-100 and is based on Stromal Cell-Derived Factor-1 (SDF-1), a naturally produced molecule that attempts to repair the heart immediately following a heart attack. Aras is CEO of each company.

“The unique thing about SDF-1 is that it appears to have potential to repair tissue in acute and chronic injury settings, suggesting, for example, that you can deliver it to the heart anytime following a heart attack and have the potential to promote some level of repair,” Aras said earlier this year. “On top of this, we believe that it may be exploited across a broad range of clinical indications.”

In the field of wound healing, SironRX hopes clinical testing shows that JVS-100 reduces the amount of time it takes a wound to heal as well as the scarring associated with it. However, it’ll likely be three or four years before SironRX gets a product on the market, Aras said earlier this year. The company will spend the next two or three years gathering data from clinical studies.

A big advantage for SironRX is that it will benefit from the human and animal studies that Juventas has already performed. Last month, Juventas announced that it had successfully completed a phase 1 clinical trial in heart failure patients. Juventas has already received the go-ahead from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin a phase 2 trial with critical limb ischemia patients.

The technology employed by SironRX and Juventas was pioneered by Dr. Marc Penn, medical director of the Cleveland Clinic’s cardiac intensive care unit. Penn is chief science officer with each company.