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SAN DIEGO --(Business Wire)-- Forward Ventures announced today that it has joined the financing syndicate for Altair Therapeutics, Inc., a new venture capital-funded biotechnology company created to focus on the discovery, development and commercialization of antisense drugs to treat asthma and other respiratory conditions.

Altair is developing AIR645 (ISIS 369645), an inhaled inhibitor of the IL-4/IL-13 signaling pathways for the treatment of asthma, which continues to be an area of unmet medical need. Altair in-licensed the compound from Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ISIS) and the two companies will collaborate to discover drugs directed to other promising targets for the treatment of respiratory conditions.

"Altair has an extraordinary opportunity to transform the treatment of respiratory diseases," said Joel Martin, Ph.D., partner at Forward Ventures. "Thomas, McNerney & Partners and Isis Pharmaceuticals did a superb job in assembling a new company with talent, programs and intellectual property typically seen in a much more mature company." Dr. Martin will join Altair's board of directors. "We are delighted to have Forward Ventures join us and look forward to working with Joel Martin in building the company," said Pratik Shah, Ph.D., executive chairman of Altair Therapeutics and partner at Thomas, McNerney & Partners, "Our therapeutic focus areas in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases."

"We are pleased to be working with Isis, a leader in the discovery and development of RNA-based therapeutics," stated Pratik Shah, Ph.D., partner at Thomas, McNerney & Partners, which structured and led the licensing and financing transactions for altair. "Asthma continues to be an area of unmet medical need and we believe isis 369645 has the potential to provide significant benefit to patients. There have been a number of recent clinical successes and validating corporate partnerships that make this space exciting."

"A key component of our business strategy is to exploit the broad applicability of our antisense technology platform and our intellectual property position to add to our pipeline of promising antisense drugs that target a broad range of diseases," said B. Lynne Parshall, Executive Vice President and CFO of isis. "To best accomplish this, we have created and partnered with numerous emerging biotech companies focused on exploiting antisense technology toward new biological areas or particular diseases, providing them with access to our technology, intellectual property or licenses to certain of our drugs. altair is now joining the ranks of these partners, which include Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, OncoGenex Technologies, Regulus therapeutics, ATL, iCo therapeutics and others. We believe that each of these partners is a highly dedicated, innovative company through which we are aggressively furthering the development of antisense drugs, expanding the breadth of our product pipeline, and creating value, while staying focused on our internal drug discovery and development activities and core technology expansion."

About Altair Therapeutics

Altair was founded by Thomas, McNerney & Partners and is building a dedicated team, combining antisense drug discovery expertise with respiratory drug development expertise, to focus solely on the development and commercialization of antisense drugs for the treatment of asthma and other respiratory conditions.