Canada-based cardiovascular therapy developer Milestone Pharmaceuticals has closed an $80m financing round that included pharmaceutical firm Novo, increasing its overall funding to more than $167m.
The round was led by RTW Investments and included Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Boxer Capital, Forbion, Domain Associates, BDC Capital, Pappas Capital, Go Capital, Fonds de solidarité FTQ and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management.
Milestone is working on small-molecule drugs for cardiovascular diseases. The financing will go to ongoing phase 3 clinical trials for a product candidate known as etripamil.
Etripamil is a calcium channel blocker being developed as a nasal spray to treat paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PAVT), a condition where a patient suffers heart palpitations.
Joseph Oliveto, Milestone’s president and CEO, said: “As our registration program for etripamil in PSVT is progressing well, we are now increasingly focused on our commercial preparedness and, at the same time, looking to expand our pipeline.
“We are pleased to have a growing number of leading biotechnology investors supporting our efforts to execute on our goals and hopefully deliver new medicines with clinically-validated mechanisms to areas of significant unmet need.”
Novo led the company’s $55m series C round in August 2017, investing alongside BDC Capital, Domain Associates, Pappas Capital, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Forbion, Go Capital and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management.
The company’s earlier funding came from Fonds de solidarité FTQ, BDC Capital, Pappas Ventures, Go Capital, Fonds Bio-Innovation and iNovia Capital, which was formerly known as MSBI Capital.
