Codiak BioSciences, a US-based exosome therapeutics company, closed a $76.5m series C round yesterday backed by Alexandria Venture Investments, the investment arm of life science real estate developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar and Alaska Permanent Fund, owned by the US state of Alaska, also contributed, as did Arch Venture Partners, Flagship Pioneering, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Boxer Capital, Sirona Capital, EcoR1 Capital and Casdin Capital.
Codiak Biosciences is working on exosome therapeutics to treat a variety of diseases. Exosome are nanometre-sized vesicles that are released and received by nearly all cells in the human body and can change the biological function of cells.
The approach is based on research conducted at the VentureLabs unit of Flagship Pioneering, by Jan Lotvall, chairman of Krefting Research Centre at University of Gothenburg, and by Raghu Kalluri, chairman and professor of the Department of Cancer Biology and director of the Metastasis Research Center at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The series C funding will allow Codiak to advance its initial drug candidates into clinical trials and to drive further development of its platform.
Codiak has now raised $168.5m in total funding since it was established in 2015.
Arch Venture Partners and Flagship Ventures co-led a $61m series B round in January 2016, which also featured Alaska Permanent Fund, Alexandria Venture Investments and Fidelity Management and Research. Arch and Flagship also co-led a $31m series A round in 2015.
Doug Williams, president and chief executive of Codiak, said: “Investors are clearly seeing the versatility of exosomes as a therapeutic platform with broad utility and the capacity to address currently undruggable targets, offering multiple paths to clinical and commercial success.
“Codiak has created a proprietary platform for exosome design and manufacturing that allows for precise targeting of important molecular pathways involved with human disease.”
– A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global Government Venturing.