UK-based healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline has kept backing one of its spin-outs, Autifony Therapeutics, which is researching treatments for hearing problems, retaining a stake after it raised a £10m ($16.5m) funding round.
GlaxoSmithKline will receive a 25.4% minority equity stake, and invest £1.25m. Autifony also raised the series A round from the Imperial Innovations Group,an Aim-listed investment trust founded by UK university Imperial College London, and venture firm SV Life Sciences. Imperial Innovations invested £5m to take a 33.6% stake in the business. UK university University College London is also a founding shareholder in Autifony.
Charles Large, GlaxoSmithKline’s former director of molecular and cellular biology, is chief scientific officer of Autifony and Giuseppe Alvaro, chemistry leader of GlaxoSmithKline’s Neuroscience division, is head of preclinical drug discovery.
The funding will be used to lay the ground for human trials in early 2013.