US-based spinal disease therapy developer DiscGenics has secured $50m in a series C round led by Ci:z Investment, a subsidiary of cosmetics producer Ci:z Holdings, and backed by medical information provider CareNet.
The round included Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, the venture capital arm of financial services firm Mitsubishi UFJ Group, as well as Eagle Fund SP1, Medical Incubator Japan (MIJ) and unnamed company board members and long-term investors.
CareNet, a subsidiary of medical products group Johnson & Johnson, and MIJ both invested in February this year. The round boosted DiscGenics’ overall funding to more than $71m and Colin Lee Novick will represent Ci:z Investment on its board of directors.
DiscGenics is developing a cell therapy treatment for lumbar degenerative disc disease and will put the series C funding into clinical trials for its lead drug candidate. It will also support work on the company’s allogeneic cell production facility and future commercialisation activities.
Flagg Flanagan, chairman and CEO of DiscGenics, said “We are extremely pleased and humbled by the interest and support we have received in this round of funding.
“I would like to sincerely thank the team at DiscGenics for their tremendous efficiency over the past several years in the use of our resources and capital to achieve clinical capacity on two continents while building out our manufacturing facility in preparation for anticipated commercial demand of our product.”
Mitsubishi UFJ Capital had previously participated in the company’s $14m series B round in 2017. It had closed $1.8m in equity funding in 2011 according to a regulatory filing and said at the time of the series B round it had raised $21.7m since it was founded in 2007.
