Alan Auerbach is vying for a repeat success. The former Cougar Biotechnology founder and CEO says his newest venture, Puma Biotechnology, has acquired the rights to Pfizer’s late-stage cancer drug, neratinib, completed a reverse merger, and raised $55 million.

Last year Auerbach sold Cougar Biotechnology, a company he founded 2003, to Johnson & Johnson for $1 billion dollars. He has since focused his energy on Puma, a development-stage biopharmaceutical dedicated to in-licensing and developing novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.

The deal struck with Pfizer gives Puma global product development and commercialization rights of neratinib. In exchange, Pfizer will receive payments from Puma based on the achievement of certain development milestones, as well as royalty payments from sales of the drug.

Puma licensed neratinib after successful initial mid-stage clinical trials demonstrated the drug showed substantial clinical activity and was well tolerated. The company says that they want to fine tune the development program and focus on patients with HER-2 positive metastatic breast cancer. It expects to initiate a trial in these patients in the first half of 2012.

Despite the difficulty raising money for new ventures in the current environment, entrepreneurs with successful track records have been able to raise money for new ventures, often turning to their previous backers.

The $55 million private placement was financed by many of the same institutions that funded Auerbach’s first venture, Cougar Biotechnology. Of those named in Puma’s press-release, Adage Capital Partners, L.P., Brookside Capital, H&Q Healthcare Investors, H&Q Life Science Investors, and T. Rowe Price Associates were all named as significant share-holders in Cougar Biotechnology.