Neobiotech company, Cyclica recently announced that it has raised CAD$23mn in Series B funding round. The funding round was led by Drive Capital with participation from Chiesi Farmaceutici, GreenSky Capital, and members of Cyclica’s management team.
With the new funding, the company will support continued innovation around Cyclica’s integrated proteome-wide drug discovery platform, and will expand its application within the pharma industry. It will also support expansion into adjacent sectors, such as agro-chemicals.
In an official statement, the company said, “The financing will accelerate Cyclica’s commercial strategy to create and own hundreds of drug discovery programs across multiple therapeutic areas. These programs are created via spin-outs and joint ventures with top tier research institutions, facilitated largely through the Cyclica Academic Partnership Program (“CAPP”).”
Propelled by a rapidly growing portfolio of more than 30 active and advancing drug discovery programs, Cyclica continues to spark innovation through a combination of venture creation and partnerships with early-stage and emerging biotech companies.
The company’s recent partnerships include EntheogeniX Biosciences, NineteenGale Therapeutics, Rosetta Therapeutics, the Rare Diseases Medicine Accelerator, a joint venture with Mannin Research, and two stealth JVs encompassing over 50 programs across multiple therapeutic areas.
Srinivas Rao, MD, PhD, CEO of EntheogeniX Biosciences and CSO of ATAI Life Sciences had this to say: “Cyclica’s computational platform shaved many months off of our timeline, and allowed us to achieve our objective of generating completely novel, synthetically tractable lead-like compounds. The flexibility, speed, and passion of the Cyclica team around drug design is readily apparent, and this enthusiasm has been a key driver of our rapid development.”
Talking about the investment, Molly Bonakdarpour, Partner at Drive Capital said, “What attracted us to Cyclica was their creative and unique business model. They’ve created a diversified portfolio of assets across therapeutic indications through a partnership model. At the same time, they continue to collaborate with multinational companies. These companies represent strategic partnership options for the Cyclica portfolio. Cyclica is enabling world-class biotech companies while increasing their probability of success.”
“At the very core of Cyclica’s ethos is the steadfast desire to help patients by advancing the discovery and development of better medicines by taking a holistic yet personalized approach,” said Naheed Kurji, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Cyclica.
He further added, “We are driving this ambitious vision forward by partnering with hyper innovative biotech companies that are rooted in sound science, and we are enabling them with our platform, our team of applied scientists, and our network of external partners. By creating new companies through spin-outs and joint ventures and helping them scale, we are in effect creating the biotech pipeline of the future.”
HrNxt.com Newsdesk has researchers and writers with an excellent domain knowledge about the talent ecosystem, and the business environment. The team keeps a tab on the latest happenings in the ecosystem to bring most relevant news and insights for our readers. You can connect with our newsdesk at newsdesk@hrnxt.com.