Circle Pharma, Inc., a South San Francisco, CA-based drug discovery company, completed a $2m expansion of its Series A financing.
Backers included new investors WI Harper Group, Elements Partners, LLC, Whitesun Healthcare Ventures and LifeForce Capital, which joined Mission Bay Capital, Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), ShangPharma Investment Group, Ltd. and a syndicated group of individual investors subscribing at the initial close.
The company will use the funds for platform development and therapeutic pipeline.
Led by David J. Earp, J.D., Ph.D., president and CEO, Circle is focused on macrocycle drug discovery based on rational design and synthetic chemistry. The company’s technology facilitates the design and synthesis of intrinsically cell-permeable macrocycles that can address both intra- and extra-cellular therapeutic targets, and can be delivered by oral administration. Circle’s macrocycle development platform is applicable across a wide range of serious diseases initially focusing on intracellular protein-protein interactions that are key drivers in cancer.
Circle’s founders are:
– Prof. Matthew P. Jacobson (Chair of the Dept. of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UC San Francisco and co-founder of Global Blood Therapeutics (NASDAQ: GBT) and Relay Therapeutics) and
– Prof. R. Scott Lokey (Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UC Santa Cruz and director of the UCSC Chemical Screening Center).
FinSMEs
25/04/2017