LifeMine’s chairman and co-founder Rick Klausner has co-led a round that included multiple corporates and pushed the overall equity to $120m.
LifeMine Therapeutics, a US-based small molecule drug developer based on research at Harvard University, has secured $50m of series B funding co-led by Rick Klausner, a co-founder and the chairman.
Milky Way Investments co-led the round, while nternet and technology group Alphabet and pharmaceutical firms WuXi AppTec and Merck & Co took part through respective vehicles GV, WuXi Healthcare Ventures and MRL Ventures Fund.
Foresite Capital, Arch Ventures and Blue Pool Capital filled out the round.
LifeMine is studying fungi with a view to developing medicines to address a range of difficult-to-treat diseases. It has also developed a collection of more than 100,000 living fungal strains sourced from pharmaceutical companies such as Merck, Schering and Pfizer.
Its drug discovery platform is based on research by another co-founder, Gregory Verdine, the Erving professor of chemistry at Harvard and a venture partner at WuXi Healthcare Ventures. Verdine now serves as president, chief executive and chief scientific officer of LifeMine.
LifeMine said it has now raised over $120m of funding since it was founded in 2017.
The series B funding will be used to speed up and expand LifeMine’s drug discovery activities and allow it to advance some of its programmes to the clinical development stage.
WuXi Healthcare Ventures provided $5m of seed funding for the company in 2016 and led a $55m series A round the following year that included GV and MRL Ventures Fund.
The series A round also featured Alexandria Venture Investments, the venture capital vehicle for life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities, as well as Foresite Capital, Arch Ventures, Boyu Capital and Blue Pool Capital.
– A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global Corporate Venturing.
