UK-based drug discovery platform developer PhoreMost completed a £33m ($45.6m) series B round featuring pharmaceutical firms XtalPi and Astellas yesterday, the latter through its Astellas Venture Management unit.
UK state-backed investment firm BGF led the round, which included Trend Investment Group, O2h ventures, Parkwalk Advisors, Morningside Ventures and Jonathan Milner, PhoreMost’s former chairman.
PhoreMost’s Siteseeker technology identifies druggable sites on protein targets in order to aid the drug discovery process. The company was spun out of University of Cambridge in 2015.
The proceeds of the round will enable PhoreMost to advance a preclinical collaboration programme, Allosteric PLK1, with cancer treatment developer Sentinel Oncology toward clinical trials for a type of brain tumour called Glioma, that are expected to take place in 2022.
The company will also use the funding to progress a number of its internal drug discovery programmes targeting cancer and ageing-related diseases. XtalPi’s chief strategy officer, Alan Jiang, will join its board of directors, as will Tim Rea of BGF and Neil Pegg of Morningside.
PhoreMost secured $15m in a 2018 series A round co-led by Jonathan Milner, Amadeus Capital Partners, Cambridge Enterprise and Parkwalk Advisors that also featured Morningside.
The series A round came after the company pulled in $3.8m of seed funding in 2015 from Milner, Amadeus Capital, Cambridge Enterprise and O2h Ventures managing partners Sunil Shah and Prashant Shah.