Based on Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital research, Nocion Therapeutics has raised $27m to develop drugs for pain and inflammation.

Nocion Therapeutics, a US-based developer of pain and inflammation drugs spun out of Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital, has officially launched with $27m in series A funding from investors co-led by F-Prime Capital Partners.
F-Prime Capital, which is part of financial services group Fidelity, co-led the round alongside venture capital firm Canaan, with participation from Partners Innovation Fund, a VC vehicle run by nonprofit healthcare system Partners Healthcare, and venture firm BioInnovation Capital.
Nocion aims to develop a class of small molecule sodium channel inhibitor to help treat major medical irritants such as pain, itching, coughing and inflammation.
The inhibitors, known as nocions, would be charged so they selectively pass through large-pore channels that lead to the sensory neurons responsible for irritation, having been activated by harmful stimuli.
Nocion hopes the approach will reduce the need for conventional local anaesthetics that cause numbness and loss of motor function. The series A capital will help it optimise and expand its range of candidate nocions for multiple indications ahead of proof-of-concept clinical testing.
Nocion Therapeutics builds on academic work started by two of its co-founders, both members of Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute – Bruce Bean, the Robert Winthrop professor of neurobiology, and Clifford Woolf, a professor of neurobiology and of neurology who is also the director of Boston Children’s FM Kirby Neurobiology Center.
Bean and Woolf’s research was supported by Harvard’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator and the Technology Development Fund at Boston Children’s, with both programs offering access to financial support and other tech transfer-focused expertise.
Nocion Therapeutics closed a seed financing round of undisclosed size with unnamed investors in the first quarter of 2018. Tom Beck, executive partner at F-Prime Capital Partners, and Julie Grant, partner at Canaan, were identified in a press release as early supporters of the company.