Bay Area's KineMed Files for Chapter 11, Owes $1 Million+ to NIH, Gates and Others
May 13, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
SAN FRANCISCO – Despite cutting deals with the likes of Pfizer , BioPharma Forest and ProNutria, Bay Area’s KineMed filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, XConomy reported this morning.
The 15-year-old company is seeking protection from creditors that it owes more than $1 million while leadership develops a plan to address its financial issues. KineMed owes more than $546,000 to its largest creditor, the law firm Hogan Lovells. The company also owes $275,000 to the National Institutes of Health and $219,000 to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, XConomy reported, citing court documents filed by KineMed.
KineMed, which is based in Emeryville, California, partners with drug companies that use its dynamic proteomics platform to develop drugs more efficiently and with less risk. Using mass spectroscopy and stable isotope labeling of protein turnover, KineMed biomarkers provide rates of change of key proteins involved with therapeutic efficacy and target engagement in drug candidates before they reach human trials. The company said its science allows “pre-clinical studies to more accurately reflect outcomes in humans, enabling us to create early predictions of efficacy and toxicity and reducing the high cost of attrition of drug candidates in their development pipelines.”
Patrick Doyle, former president of KineMed, said at the time of the Pfizer deal that the company’s kinetic biomarker platform provides “real advantages over other approaches to biomarker discovery in de-risking and advancing medicines development.” The company’s technology looks to target the cause of a disease, as opposed to the symptoms.
In January, privately-held KineMed and Pfizer struck a deal to develop novel proprietary biomarkers in various areas of unmet medical need. In June 2015, the company struck its deal with ProNutria to evaluate novel biologics designed to restore cellular homeostasis in amino acid biology.
Despite these two deals, as well as others, KineMed has seen little revenue from its partnerships, XConomy said. While KineMed has struggled with revenue, XConomy noted the company has not had any problems compensating its executives. Over the past 12 months, David Fineman, chairman of the board and KineMed’s chief executive officer, has received $256,118 in wages and “expense reimbursement.” In total, eight executives received about $2 million in wages and other forms of compensation. Additionally, XConomy noted that court filings revealed Fineman’s daughter received $15,800 over a period of two months for “social media consulting services.” Several of those executives are no longer with the company. Currently, Fineman is listed as the only member of the management team on the company website.
KineMed’s website also only shows one other member of the company’s board of directors, Marc K. Hellerstein, who co-founded the company in 2001 and serves as the chairman of the company’s scientific advisory board.