RNA-drug developer Quark aims for $30M after failed IPO

Fremont, Calif.-based Quark Pharmaceuticals, a biotech developing drugs based on a new technology called RNA interference, hopes to raise $30 million in an eighth funding round, VentureWire reports. Last year, Quark sought $80.5 million in an ultimately abortive IPO.

Quark apparently hopes to close the round within the next few weeks. The company hasn’t given up hope of going public, and now envisions re-filing its IPO in mid-2009. Quark, a biotech chameleon with a long and convoluted history, has so far raised roughly $72 million, according to VentureWire.

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For the record, I should note that Quark CEO Danny Zurr objects to the characterization of his company as a Johnny-come-lately in the field of RNA interference, a clinically unproven way of “silencing” disease-related genes using short, tailored stretches of RNA. I wrote earlier, based on a number of fairly unambiguous press releases, that Quark had licensed its two leading RNAi drug candidates from Silence Therapeutics, then known as SR Pharma. In an interview a few months back, Zurr told me that Silence had been “deceiving the public” with its public statements, and that Quark had targeted the two genes in question on its own.

I didn’t write about my discussion with Zurr at the time because I wanted to explore the background further, something I obviously haven’t yet done. But with a new funding looming, I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of all this with Silence shortly.