When Amgen bought Ilypsa last summer, it kept one of its non-absorbed polymer drug candidates for itself, leaving Ilypsa's other candidates in limbo. Key Ilypsa employees and investors wanted to carry out those programs, and with Amgen's blessing, they moved swiftly to form Relypsa Inc., which retains rights to Ilypsa's remaining pipeline and drug discovery platform. Relypsa management, all from Ilypsa, intends to continue Ilypsa's fast pace of pipeline development, with a NCE planned for entry into the clinic every year for the next three years.

Company executives at Thrombotargets hit the ground running upon its 2005 founding in Barcelona, Spain. In two years, they have developed a pipeline of 11 hemostatics, anticoagulants, antiplatelets and fibrinolytics, all enabled by the company's proprietary high-throughput screening process, BioPlatformScreen. Thrombotargets is now preparing for clinical trials of its lead candidate, an antihemorrhagic human recombinant protein that has received FDA orphan drug status for two indications.

ActoGeniX is trying to tap into the industry's biologicals craze with a gut-centric delivery system that uses genetically modified bacteria to produce and deliver drugs. The company will develop its ActoBiotics for the treatment of severe gastrointestinal diseases, metabolic diseases, immune disorders, and allergies, where it feels that there is either an unmet need or its therapeutics can offer a significant advantage over existing products.