Principia Biopharma Inc., a South San Francisco, CA-based biopharmaceutical company, raised $50m in Series B financing.
The round was led by Sofinnova Ventures, with participation from existing investors Morgenthaler Ventures, New Leaf Venture Partners, OrbiMed, SR One, Mission Bay Capital and additional backers. In conjunction with the funding, Srinivas Akkaraju, MD, PhD, a General Partner at Sofinnova Ventures, joined the company’s board of directors.
Led by Martin Babler, Chief Executive Officer, Principia focuses on discovering and developing small molecule drugs within the fields of autoimmune disease and oncology. Expanding on technology originally licensed from University of California, San Francisco, the company has built a comprehensive drug discovery and development engine utilizing its proprietary technology around reversible covalent small molecule inhibitors. This platform enables Principia to develop selective small molecules against a diverse range of kinases and other disease targets.
The company, which had previously raised $40m in Series A financing, now intends to use the capital to further advance its pipeline, including an oral BTK inhibitor for potential use in autoimmune disease and oncology, an oral, selective, irreversible FGFR inhibitor program for the treatment of solid tumors, an oral IL-17 pathway inhibitor program with utility across a range of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
FinSMEs
22/04/2014