WuXi Healthcare Ventures has led a first funding round for LifeMine Therapeutics, based on research by Harvard University profressor Gregory Verdine.
US-based biotechnology company LifeMine Therapeutics closed a $55m series A round yesterday led by WuXi Healthcare Ventures, the corporate venturing vehicle for medical research firm WuXi PharmaTech.
GV, Merck Ventures and Alexandria Venture Investments, respective subsidiaries of internet technology conglomerate Alphabet, pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co and life sciences real estate investment trut Alexandria Real Estate Equities, also participated.
The round was filled out by venture capital firms Foresite Capital and Arch Ventures, private equity firm Boyu Capital and investment adviser Blue Pool Capital. WuXi Healthcare Ventures had previously supplied $5m in seed capital for LifeMine in 2016.
LifeMine Therapeutics is working on a drug discovery platform that will generate therapies based on fungi. The platform combines genomics with artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create treatments for chronic and currently untreatable diseases.
The technology is based on research by Gregory Verdine, venture partner at WuXi Healthcare Ventures. He is also a professor of chemistry in Harvard University’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
Verdine co-founded the company with WeiQing Zhou, entrepreneur-in-residence at WuXi Healthcare Ventures; Hingge Hsu, senior adviser to WuXi Healthcare Ventures; and Rick Klausner, founder and director of immunotherapy developer Juno Therapeutics.
In conjunction with the series A funding, LifeMine has also named its board of directors, appointing Verdine and Klausner, who will chair the board, as well as Edward Hu, founding partner at WuXi Healthcare Ventures, and GV general partner Krishna Yeshwant.
The board’s other members include James Tananbaum, founder and chief executive of Foresite Capital, and Yanling Cao, managing director at Boyu Capital.
Verdine, co-founder, chief executive and president of LifeMine, said: “My life’s passion has been to discover new treatments that address formidable challenges holding back modern medicine and for major, complex diseases.
“The fungal biosphere is full of answers to these outstanding questions in the form of powerful, bioactive small molecules that engage human targets not previously targeted by conventional drugs.
“Despite their promise, these fundamentally innovative medicines proved difficult and time-consuming to discover by traditional means, leaving the industry in search of a technological solution.”
– This article first appeared on our sister site Global Corporate Venturing.
