Private equity firm Bain Capital committed up to $300m in funding for Cardurion Pharmaceuticals, a US-based cardiovascular disease drug developer backed by pharmaceutical company Takeda, yesterday.
The capital will be supplied through subsidiaries Bain Capital Life Sciences and Bain Capital Private Equity. Adam Koppel, managing director at Bain Capital Life Sciences, is taking a board seat at the company, as is Bain Capital Life Sciences principal Nicholas Downing.
Founded in 2017, Cardurion is developing therapeutics for the treatment of heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases.
The company’s pipeline of drug candidates includes CRD-733, a PDE9 inhibitor that addresses the cell-signalling breakdown that contributes to the progression of heart failure, and a CaMKII inhibitor candidate to treat tachycardia, atrial fibrillation and fatal arrhythmia.
Cardurion plans to use the funding to support the advancement of its pipeline, scale up its team and further develop its drug development platform. It had secured $15.7m from a single undisclosed investor in April 2017, according to a regulatory filing.
Takeda formed a development partnership with Cardurion in August 2017, providing the company with a 12-person cardiovascular research team from its Shonan site in Japan, as well as laboratory space, development resources and licenses for a portfolio of preclinical-stage cardiovascular drug programmes.
Cardurion has subsequently received $10m in debt financing from two undisclosed investors, as well as additional funding from Polaris Venture Partners in November 2019. It confirmed Takeda as an existing investor this week.
Peter Lawrence, Cardurion’s chief executive, said: “This funding will allow us to advance our first-in-class PDE9 inhibitor into a major phase 2 trial in heart failure and to support the initiation of first-in-human studies with our CaMKII inhibitor programme in several cardiovascular indications.”
