SPECIALTY
Vascular

STAGE
Pre-Clinical And Clinical

POSITION
Co-Investor

BOARD
BOD Observer until June 2010

EXIT
Acquired by Sanofi in 2010 and then later acquired by Celgene in January 2018

Headquartered in San Diego, Targegen was a private company founded in 2001. The mission of the company was to use its expertise in vascular biology and knowledge regarding the src kinase inhibitors and their control over the vascular edema in an effort to develop drugs in ophthalmology, cancer and inflammatory diseases. The main program in acute macular degeneration could be the first treatment in a cream form to treat this disease that keeps growing with age. The company also had a first inhibitor of a new class that has for target non-receptor tyrosine kinase (i.e. Jak-2) which addresses myeloproliferatives diseases like policythemia vera, thrombocytopenia and primary myelofibrosis. It is precisely this second program which achieved commercial status with the involvement of Sanofi first which acquired Targegen in 2010 and later on when the company became Impact Biomedicine it was later acquired by Celgene in January 2018.