Pfizer Venture Investments, the corporate venturing arm of pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) co-led a $62m series C round for US-based biopharmaceutical firm Complexa on Wednesday.
Banking and asset management firm Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners and investment firms HBM Healthcare Investments and Jafco also contributed to the round, as did unnamed existing backers.
Founded in 2012, Complexa is working on a therapy called CXA-10 for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, an orphan disease affecting the kidney, as well as for a rare pulmonary disease known as pulmonary arterial hypertension.
The funding will be used to advance CXA-10 into two phase 2 clinical trials, each aimed at one of the aforementioned conditions. The trials are expected to begin in early 2018.
The money will also support the progression of a third treatment that will target an undisclosed condition, advancing it towards an investigational new drug filing with US regulator the Food and Drug Administration.
Barbara Dalton, vice-president of venture capital at Pfizer Venture Investments, will join Complexa’s board of directors, as will NEA general partner David Mott, Sara Nayeem, a partner on NEA’s healthcare team, and Rothschild partner Gilles Nobécourt.
Jafco previously led Complexa’s $13m series B round in 2014, with participation from unnamed existing shareholders.
Scientific Health Development, Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, Innovation Works and various angel investors had supplied the company with $3.6m in series A capital two years earlier.
Complexa is a spinout from University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine and its technology is based on research by Bruce Freeman, professor and chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, and Margaret Tarpey, professor of anaesthesiology and pharmacology.