US-based kidney disease treatment developer Walden Biosciences launched on Tuesday with $51m it secured in a series A round co-led by pharmaceutical company UCB’s corporate venturing fund, UCB Ventures.
Venture capital firm Arch Venture Partners co-led the round, and Ari Nowacek, a principal at the firm, is a co-founder of Walden. Emmanuel Lacroix, vice-president and partner at UCB Pharma, is on the company’s board of directors.
Founded earlier this year, Walden is working on therapeutics designed to restore renal function in the body by targeting cells specific to the kidney and its biologic processes, and in doing so reverse the progress of kidney disease.
The startup’s co-founders include Jochen Reiser, chairman of Rush University Medical Center’s Department of Internal Medicine, Ralph C. Brown, professor of medicine at the same university’s Rush Medical College, and Sanja Sever, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Blaine McKee, Walden’s president and chief executive, said: “Kidney disease is a public health crisis and there is an urgent need to develop innovative therapies that directly target the disease and provide an alternative to dialysis or transplant.
“Walden seeks to revolutionise the field of nephrology and we are relentlessly focused on changing the way patients with all forms of kidney disease are treated.”
