Moderna Therapeutics, a US-based RNA therapeutics developer backed by pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, raised $500m yesterday from investors including Alexandria Venture Investments, a branch of life sciences real estate trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Financial services provider Julius Baer, Fidelity Management & Research, BB Biotech, Sequoia Capital China, Pictet, Viking Global Investors and ArrowMark Partners also took part.
The investors were filled out by the Singapore government-owned EDBI and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund owned by the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The round valued Moderna at $7.5bn, according to the Financial Times.
Incubated by venture capital firm Flagship Ventures in 2010, Moderna is working on treatments based on messenger RNA, molecules that transmit genetic information from a person’s DNA to the body’s ribosome, telling it how to link amino acids.
The company is developing 19 drug candidates taking in treatments for infectious, rare or cardiovascular diseases along with immuno-oncology therapies. 10 of those have entered clinical trials, and the funding will support their progress.
Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said: “This past year we have demonstrated an ability to scale our platform and introduce new development candidates across multiple disease modalities, including promising opportunities in rare disease, immuno-oncology, and cardiovascular and infectious diseases.”
The round took Modern’s total equity funding to approximately $1.62bn. AstraZeneca invested $140m in the company as part of a $474m round in 2016 that included undisclosed new and existing backers.
Investors including Flagship and pharmaceutical company Alexion Pharmaceuticals had supplied roughly $200m for Moderna across three rounds when it added $450m in a 2015 round featuring Alexion and AstraZeneca.
The corporates were joined in the 2015 round, the largest VC round ever raised by a biotech company at the time, by Viking Global Investors, Invus, RA Capital Management, Wellington Management Company and unnamed existing backers.
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Securities and Morgan Stanley were placement agents for the round while Goodwin Procter supplied legal counsel.