US-based biopharmaceutical company Miragen Therapeutics has received $7m of financing from backers including Amgen Ventures in the second tranche of its series B round, according to the Boulder County Business Report.
Miragen previously raised the $6m first tranche of the $20m series B round in 2012. In both tranches Amgen Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of pharmaceutical company Amgen, was joined by Remeditex Ventures, Atlas Venture, Boulder Ventures and Broadview Ventures.
The third tranche is due to come in the next 12 to 18 months, depending on how quickly Miragen can advance its cardiovascular disease treatments to clinical trials, chief financial officer James Leverone said.
“There weren’t any specific milestones,” Leverone told BCR. “It’s just the way the equity was structured. We didn’t need all of the money at once.”
The funding was announced at the same time as a partnership with France-based pharmaceutical research company Servier, which will involve Servier leading the clinical development and commercialisation of Miragen’s microRNA product candidates in every country except the US and Japan.
Miragen closed its $12m series A round in 2009 after securing funding from Amgen, Broadview, Atlas Venture, Boulder and the Peierls Foundation.