Ambit was an American

pharmaceutical A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and re ...

company focused on development of

kinase inhibitor A protein kinase inhibitor is a type of enzyme inhibitor that blocks the action of one or more protein kinases. Protein kinases are enzymes that phosphorylate (add a phosphate, or PO4, group) to a protein and can modulate its function. The phospha ...

therapeutics to treat a variety of human diseases.The SEC 10K submission for 2013 indicates that the company is a "biopharmaceutical" company, which implies that they are primarily developing

biopharmaceutical A biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. Different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, t ...

s; however, their lead product is a small molecule therapeutic, calling into question the term used in the SEC submission. , the company was based in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

, California, and consisted of a single facility. Ambit made an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in May 2013, and was listed on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

exchange under the symbol "AMBI". Ambit was acquired by

Daiichi Sankyo is a global pharmaceutical company and the second-largest pharmaceutical company in Japan. It achieved JPY 981.8 billion in revenue in 2019. The company owns the American biotechnology company Plexxikon, American pharmaceutical company American R ...

in 2014 and is no longer traded on the

exchange.

Products

, three products were under development, of which

quizartinib Quizartinib (AC220) is a small molecule receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, originally from Ambit Biosciences and later acquired by Daiichi Sankyo, that is currently under development for the treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia. Quizartinib is so ...

was their lead drug candidate.

Business model

In June 2010, Ambit completed a Series D-2 round of equity financing, raising $30 million in new capital. The investor syndicate was led by Apposite Capital LLP and included existing investors such as Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund,

OrbiMed Advisors OrbiMed (also known as OrbiMed Advisors) is an American investment firm based in New York City, United States. It is focused on making public and private investments in the Healthcare and Biotechnology industries. OrbiMed is considered to be the l ...

, Forward Ventures, Roche Venture Fund, MedImmune Ventures, GIMV,

GrowthWorks GrowthWorks Capital Ltd is a Canadian venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that hav ...

, Genechem, Radius Ventures, NovaQuest and Horizon Technology Finance. , Ambit sought to develop new therapeutics through internal, proprietary research, which is evidenced by their pipeline of three products consisting entirely of internally developed therapeutics. Further, Ambit aimed to be a full

life cycle Life cycle, life-cycle, or lifecycle may refer to: Science and academia *Biological life cycle, the sequence of life stages that an organism undergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the production of the offspring *Life-cycle hypothesis, ...

pharmaceutical company by conducting discovery, development and further commercialization of therapeutics. Among the firms who invested heavily in Ambit prior to its

was

Foresite Capital Foresite Capital is an American venture capital and growth equity firm headquartered in San Francisco. As of March 2021, the company had raised four funds: Foresite Capital Fund I, II, III, IV and V. History Foresite Capital was founded in 2011 ...

in January 2013. In November 2014, Ambit was acquired by

. The prime asset that drove this deal was Ambit's quizartinib (AC220).

References

Notes

Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Companies based in San Diego Pharmaceutical companies of the United States Health care companies based in California Daiichi Sankyo {{med-company-stub