Ambit was an American

pharmaceutical Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, 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 ...

company focused on development of

kinase inhibitor In biochemistry, a kinase () is an enzyme that catalyzes the transfer of phosphate groups from high-energy, phosphate-donating molecules to specific substrates. This process is known as phosphorylation, where the high-energy ATP molecule don ...

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 coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

, 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 investm ...

in May 2013, and was listed on the

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

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 1,278 billion in revenue in 2022. The company owns the American pharmaceutical company American Regent. Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. (DSI) began ...

in 2014 and is no longer traded on the

exchange.

Products

, three products were under development, of which

quizartinib Quizartinib, sold under the brand name Vanflyta, is an anti-cancer medication used for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. It is a small molecule receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Its molecular target is FLT3, also known as CD135 wh ...

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 (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 one of the world's large ...

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

GrowthWorks GrowthWorks Capital Ltd is a Canadian venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high ...

, 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 conception to reproduction *Life-cycle hypothesis, in economics *Erikson's stages of psy ...

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 (Foresite) is an American, multi-stage healthcare and life sciences investment firm headquartered in Los Angeles, and with offices in The San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. As of June 2024, the company had raised six prim ...

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

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

References

Notes

{{reflist, group=n Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Companies based in San Diego Defunct pharmaceutical companies of the United States Health care companies based in California Daiichi Sankyo