Ventus Therapeutics, Inc., a Boston, Massachusetts and Montreal, Canada-based biotechnology company utilizing rational structure-based drug design to discover small-molecule medicines for high value and elusive targets, raised $100m in Series B financing.
The round was led by RA Capital Management with participation from a select syndicate including BVF Partners L.P., Casdin Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Alexandria Venture Investments. Founding investor Versant Ventures also participated in the round, as did existing investor GV (formerly Google Ventures). Concurrent with this financing, Josh Resnick, M.D., managing director at RA Capital Management, will join the Ventus Board of Directors.
The company intends to use the funds to advance its pipeline of novel medicines to treat diseases in multiple therapeutic areas and expand platform capabilities. Ventus’ most advanced programs are focused on critical targets of the innate immune system.
Led by Marcelo Bigal, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO, Ventus is a biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing novel small-molecule medicines by pioneering new frontiers in structure-based drug discovery for biologically validated, but elusive, drug targets. Using two platforms – Structural Immunology and ReSOLVE™ – the company is rapidly advancing a pipeline of new medicines to treat autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases and cancer. Its most advanced programs are enabled by the Structural Immunology platform, which unlocks rational, structure-based drug discovery for critical targets in innate immune pathways. The ReSOLVE platform reveals novel druggable sites for traditionally undruggable targets, enabling the company to expand its pipeline into oncology and neurology.
While the targets of Ventus’ lead program and other pipeline programs are undisclosed, the company’s second most advanced molecule targets NLRP3, a key mediator of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1b and IL-18. NLRP3 is implicated in many autoimmune diseases and other conditions characterized by aberrant inflammation.
FinSMEs
08/04/2021