Enterprise Therapeutics breathes easy with $5m

Sussex University spinout Enterprise Therapeutics, a drug developer focused on finding treatments for respiratory diseases, today completed a £4m ($5m) round co-led by Imperial Innovations, the commercialisation firm spun out of Imperial College London.

Founding investor Epidarex Capital, a venture capital fund targeting early-stage life sciences and health technology companies, co-led the round.

Epidarex is backed by a diverse group of private, academic and public investors, including Scotland’s economic development agency Scottish Enterprise and European Investment Fund, a European Union agency that provides capital to the private sector.

Founded in 2014, Enterprise Therapeutics is developing new drugs for patients suffering from three  conditions – severe asthma; cystic fibrosis, a condition causing mucus build-up in the lungs and other organs; and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the umbrella term for lung conditions that cause breathing problems, such as emphysema.

The latest funding will be used to speed up the three drug discovery projects toward drug candidate selection, the process of choosing the most viable treatment for clinical development. As part of its drug discovery, the company will search for mechanisms that increase the clearance of mucus or reduce levels of mucus production.

Enterprise Therapeutics closed its series A round at £4m in May 2015. The spinout initially raised £1.6m in February 2015 from Epidarex, which then topped up its investment by £400,000, while Imperial Innovations provided the additional £2m.

John Ford, CEO of Enterprise, said: “Respiratory disease remains an area of high unmet medical need especially in the area of [cystic fibrosis] where existing therapies do not treat all patients.

This additional funding will allow us to advance our research projects and move closer towards our goal of evaluating the efficacy of muco-regulatory drugs in patients.”