Pharmaceutical company Novo co-led a $40m series A round for US-based liver disease therapy developer Cirius Therapeutics yesterday with private equity and venture capital firm Frazier Healthcare Partners.
Renaissance Venture Capital Fund, private equity firm Adams Street Partners and existing investors including VC firm Hopen Life Sciences Ventures also contributed to the round.
Founded as Octeta Therapeutics, Cirius is working on an oral insulin sensitiser known as MSDC-0602K that is being developed to combat a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease called teatohepatitis (NASH) and liver fibrosis.
Cirius will use the funding to complete a phase 2b clinical trial for MSDC-0602K, which addresses the insulin resistance thought to be a central factor in NASH.
Bob Baltera, the newly appointed CEO of Cirius, said: “We believe MSDC-0602K has the potential to be a critical therapeutic tool for treating patients with NASH.
“A great deal of experimental data, including results from a phase 2 trial in patients with type 2 diabetes, has been generated demonstrating that these next-generation insulin sensitisers act in a novel way to positively impact the underlying metabolic parameters that drive NASH.”
Nilesh Kumar, a partner for Novo’s corporate venturing unit Novo Ventures, has joined the board of Cirius in conjunction with the round, together with Dan Estes from Frazier Healthcare.