BioAxone opens R&D center in Cambridge

Lisa McKerracher, CEO and founder of BioAxone BioSciences, just opened a Cambridge research and development office and plans to hire 12 people by 2013.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

BioAxone BioSciences Inc., a small biotech that has a drug candidate aimed at helping regenerate spinal cord nerve pathways ready to begin pivotal trials, has opened its research and development headquarters in the Cambridge Innovation Center, and CEO Lisa McKerracher says she plans to hire 12 employees to staff the center by next year.

BioAxone was founded by McKerracher last year in Florida, based on the technology - and with the same investors - as a Canada-based company of the same name which she founded in 2000. The Canadian company was a spinout from the University of Montreal, based on McKerrachers invention of a drug candidate called Cethrin, which she says will likely be the first drug to treat spinal cord injury to reach the market. Cethrin promotes axon regeneration and neuroprotection, and can also modify adverse immune reactions that follow spinal cord injury, according to McKerracher.

Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) affects more than 12,000 Americans annually, and about 70 percent of patients suffer injuries to the cervical spinal cord, which can lead to quadriplegia. The only current treatment for SCI is surgery and rehabilitation, said McKerracher.

The company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday at the CIC along with the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, which McKerracher says helped her find on office in the area. BioAxone will retain its corporate headquarters in Florida, where McKerracher lives with her husband. Currently, McKerracher told Mass High Tech that as the CEO, she works with other scientists on a contract basis, but plans to expand soon depending on financing.

I plan to get a lab going here, she said. I think its important (for a biotech) to have its own lab.

McKerracher said BioAxone closed a round of seed funding earlier this year, and she is now looking at equity financing as well as partnerships with other biotechs and exploring grant options to begin the Phase 2/3 trials on Cethrin.

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BioAxone opens R&D center in Cambridge