Two Boston-area biotechs announced new mega-rounds on Tuesday as the life sciences industry begins to see a rebound in venture capital funding.
The largest local round on Tuesday went to Cardurion Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Burlington company working on treatments for cardiovascular diseases.
Cardurion has landed a $260 million Series B financing led by Ascenta Capital. Its other investors included NEA, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Fidelity Management. The company has 50 employees in the U.S. and 15 in Shonan, Japan.
Cardurion has a unique model in that it develops its own drug candidates, but it also prioritizes acquiring drugs. CEO Peter Lawrence said Cardurion has “very sophisticated search and evaluation internally, almost like a big pharma company.”
“Part of our DNA is to actually go out and do multiple deals to try and advance our company and as rapidly as possible,” Lawrence said.
One of the company’s lead drugs, CRD‑750, a PDE9 inhibitor, was in-licensed. Lawrence said CRD‑750 is in two Phase 2 clinical trials for both types of heart failure.
Cardurion’s other lead drug, CRD-4730, is known as a CaMKII inhibitor and is in a Phase 2 trial for catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, a rare genetic arrhythmic disease. This drug was in-licensed from Takeda Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Cardurion has been working with Takeda since its early days. Takeda made a pre-Series A investment in Cardurion, Lawrence said, and made available to it preclinical cardiovascular programs the pharma giant was putting aside. Lawrence said Cardurion also hired 14 Takeda scientists and set up operations in Shonan.
Flush with new capital, Cardurion plans to support its lead drug trials, expand the cardiovascular indications for its drug candidates, progress internal discovery work and acquire new assets.
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Scorpion lands $150M
Another private biotech, Scorpion Therapeutics Inc., also announced a capital infusion on Tuesday. The Boston oncology company has closed a $150 million Series C financing.
Scorpion’s big round was co-led by Frazier Life Sciences and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
The biotech said the new funds would be used to support its small molecule oncology drugs. One of Scorpion’s drugs, STX-478, is recruiting for a Phase 1/2 clinical trial to test it as a standalone treatment and in combination with approved treatments in patients with HR+/HER2- breast cancer. Scorpion is also testing STX-478 as a monotherapy in gynecological cancers, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, among other types of cancer.
Back in early 2021, shortly after publicly launching, Scorpion said it brought in $162 million in an oversubscribed Series B round. Scorpion was founded by serial biotech entrepreneur Gary Glick, previously the founder and CEO of IFM Therapeutics.
| Rank | Prior Rank | Firm/prior rank (*unranked in 2023)/ |
|---|---|---|
|
1 |
1 |
General Catalyst |
|
2 |
4 |
F-Prime Capital |
|
3 |
7 |
RA Capital Management |