MedAvante Closes $20 Million Financing by Goldman Sachs, Trevi Health Ventures

Pioneer in Centralized Psychiatric Patient Evaluation for Clinical Trials
Expanding Into New Areas of Drug Development

HAMILTON, N.J., July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- MedAvante, Inc., the leader in
centralized psychiatric patient evaluation, announced today that it has
closed a $20 million financing by Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Trevi Health
Ventures. MedAvante has developed an innovative platform to centralize and
calibrate the assessment of patients undergoing treatment in clinical
trials in order to more reliably and precisely measure their response to
therapies. MedAvante currently provides centralized patient evaluation
services to many of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies with
central nervous system drug candidates, and has administered more than
21,000 remote expert assessments for Phase 2 and Phase 3 large pharma
studies including acute schizophrenia, major depressive disorder,
generalized anxiety disorder, and psychotic depression.

The Company will use the capital to fund the expansion of its existing
patient evaluation platform to meet increasing demand from pharmaceutical
companies. The capital will also enable MedAvante to apply its platform
into new areas of drug development, including monitoring by mental health
professionals of potential warning signs for suicide. The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring most drugs with centrally acting
mechanisms to be assessed for suicidality, regardless of whether the drugs
are being developed for neurological or psychiatric indications.

"The investment by Goldman Sachs and Trevi Health gives MedAvante the
capital and resources to deliver on our mission of helping the life
sciences industry bring better and safer drugs to patients faster," stated
Paul Gilbert, Chief Executive Officer of MedAvante. Gilbert further noted,
"Our unique ability to centralize and standardize the assessment of
psychiatric patient's disease severity and progression is transforming
clinical trials for psychiatric drugs; we will now be able to bring this
same new paradigm to bear in other areas of critical medical need, such as
the development of new treatments for Alzheimer's disease and the
assessment of the risk of suicidality for all classes of drugs."

The former FDA Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs,
Scott Gottlieb, MD, a member of MedAvante's Board of Directors, commented,
"The cost of conducting trials to treat neurological and psychiatric
disorders has been increasing rapidly in recent years in large part due to
the approaches industry has been using to measure patient response. Larger
numbers of patients are being enrolled in psychiatric trials simply because
outdated approaches to drug development require more patients to be exposed
to an experimental drug to see whether it's working." He continued,
"MedAvante has pioneered an approach that offers one of the most effective
solutions to improving the efficiency and reliability of psychiatric drug
development, enabling new treatments to be assessed more efficiently for
safety and effectiveness and potentially reach patients sooner and at lower
cost."

Andrew Fink, Managing Director of Trevi Health Ventures, noted,
"MedAvante's solution solves the critical problem of enhancing precision
and reliability in central nervous system trials head-on. This capital
infusion will enable the company to meet the rapidly expanding demand for
more accurate psychiatric assessment. Importantly, MedAvante has
demonstrated the ability to deliver centralized ratings with the
operational precision and scalability needed to expand globally."

Walter Greenblatt & Associates served as MedAvante's exclusive
financial advisor in the transaction.

About MedAvante

MedAvante has pioneered and commercialized a solution that addresses
one of the global pharmaceutical industry's most intractable problems: the
high rate of uninformative or failed studies. MedAvante provides
centralized expert psychological rater services to the pharmaceutical
industry using unique methods to systematically remove potential sources of
bias and variability from the assessment process. By centralizing
assessments with expert, standardized, objective, clinical interviewers
over MedAvante's 2 way real-time high quality video-conferencing, MedAvante
makes subjective measures of determining drug efficacy increasingly
objective. As a result, it is now possible to increase study power, reduce
trial failure rates, and get more effective central nervous system (CNS)
drugs to market sooner. MedAvante has administered more than 21,000 remote
expert assessments for Phase 2 and Phase 3 large pharma CNS studies.
MedAvante employs 73 professionals based in facilities in Hamilton, NJ; Los
Angeles, CA and Madison, WI.

About Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs is a leading global investment banking, securities and
investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide
to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations,
financial institutions, governments and high net worth individuals. Founded
in 1869, it is one of the oldest and largest investment banking firms. The
firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in London,
Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other major financial centers around the
world.

About Trevi Health Ventures

Trevi Health Ventures is a healthcare investment firm with over $100
million under management. The investment team combines experienced
investment professionals and senior-level executives/entrepreneurs with
proven track records. Trevi provides development and growth capital for
private healthcare companies with emphasis on medical devices,
biopharmaceuticals and healthcare services. The firm was founded in 2005
and has offices in New York and London.

About Walter Greenblatt & Associates

Walter Greenblatt & Associates is an investment banking and specialized
consulting organization focused on helping healthcare companies succeed
through strategic planning, capital raising and mergers and acquisitions.
The firm serves biotechnology, healthcare and healthcare services companies
from very early stage startups to established public companies.

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[Via Healthcare]