ViewPoint Therapeutics, Inc., a San Francisco, CA-based biotechnology company pioneering the development of crystallin stabilizers to prevent and treat cataracts and presbyopia, closed a $4m Series A financing.
The round was co-led by Mission Bay Capital and Lagunita BioSciences LLC, with participation from the Biotechnology Value Fund, L.P., as well as the University of Michigan through its MINTS initiative, Asset Management Ventures, and other individual investors. In conjunction with the funding, Dr. Douglas Crawford, Managing Director of Mission Bay Capital and Dr. Mark Blumenkranz, Co-Founder and a Director of Lagunita BioSciences LLC, joined ViewPoint’s Board of Directors.
The company plans to use the proceeds to advance its lead candidate, VP1-001, through preclinical proof of concept experiments and second-generation compounds from its ongoing medicinal chemistry efforts.
Co-founded in 2014 by Dr. Jason Gestwicki, Associate Professor at the University of California San Francisco Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Dr. Leah Makley, CSO, and Ed Hurwitz, J.D., M.B.A., Executive Chairman, ViewPoint is focused on developing drugs to prevent or reverse protein misfolding, which is implicated in numerous common disorders of aging including cataracts, presbyopia, and neurodegenerative diseases. VP1-001 is a small molecule that is active in preclinical models of age-related cataracts via a target-based screening and optimization effort.
FinSMEs
06/05/2016