Chapel Hill life sciences spin-out Spyryx Biosciences secures $18m series A.

Spyryx Biosciences, a spin-out of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill which is developing lung disease treatments, has raised $18m in series A backing.

The funding was supported by Hatteras Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, and 5AM Ventures. As part of the deal, Tim Shannon, general partner at Canaan, will chair Spyryx’s board, and will be joined by Christy Shaffer of Hatteras and Brian Daniels of 5AM.

Spyryx is commercialising technology from Chapel Hill developed by Robert Tarran which utilises a mechanism in the lungs to regulate fluid in the airways. Spyryx believes that this mechanism can be manipulated to treat symptoms in cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and other obstructive lung diseases.

Tarran, who founded Spyryx, said: “Currently, there is no cure for CF or COPD. We hope that we can use this funding to translate our laboratory findings into treatments for both of these diseases. We gratefully acknowledge key funding from the NIH and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, which has enabled us to get to this point.”