Japan-based cell therapy developer Kringle Pharma has closed a ¥1.69bn ($15.5m) funding round after raising $6.8m from investors including property developer Chishima Real Estate and clinical services provider Miraca.
Miraca participated through its corporate venturing arm, MSF Capital Partners, and the round also featured financial services firms Nanto Bank, Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank and Resona Bank, the latter two through OKB Capital and Resona Capital respectively.
Venture Labo Investment, Osaka University Venture Capital, HT Capital, Yitu Capital and undisclosed individual investors filled out the list.
Spun out of Osaka University in 2001, Kringle Pharma is developing drugs for intractable neurological diseases, a category defined by the Japanese health authorities as rare illnesses that lack treatments or which have unidentifiable causes.
The capital will fund clinical trials for acute spinal cord injury treatments that use hepatocyte growth factor developed by the company to help cells form new blood vessels during plaque development.
Kringle raised the $8.8m first tranche of the round in February this year, with medical information provider M3, veterinary drug developer Nippon Zenyaku Kogyo (Zenoaq), clinical services provider POC Clinical Research and medical product distributor Toho Holdings all investing.
CEJ Capital, DBJ Capital, Keio Innovation Initiative (KII), Tohoku University Venture Partners (THVP) and an undisclosed additional investor also took part in the first close.
THVP had already supplied $1.8m for Kringle in 2018, two years after KII and DBJ Capital led a $5.3m round featuring cell technology researcher Reprocell, Zenoaq, VC firm Cyberdyne, the Kanagawa Science Park-owned KSP fund and a vehicle operated by financial services providers Toho Bank and San-In Godo Bank’s Toho Lease and Gogin Capital subsidiaries.
Insurer Nippon Life’s Nissay Capital subsidiary led an $8.6m round for the company in 2009 that followed $1.4m provided by undisclosed backers the year before.
Kringle had previously secured $9.7m in another Nissay Capital-led round in 2007 that included Zenoaq, Nippon Venture Capital and Ant Capital Partners (then Nikko Antfactory). Its earliest funding was a $12.5m round in 2005 that was also led by Nissay Capital.
