Healthcare companies Insitut Merieux and Shire have helped biotechnology company NeuroPhage Pharmaceuticals raise $9m in a series B extension, which takes the total round to $21m.
Merieux backed the company through its corporate venturing unit Merieux Developpement, which plans to invest €70m ($100m) as a minority shareholder in third parties between 2010 and 2013.
In March last year during the initial B round close, Valérie Calenda, partner at Mérieux Développement, joined NeuroPhage’s board, while Michael Heartlein, vice-president of research at Shire Human Genetic Therapies, became a board observer.
In 2008, NeuroPhage raised a $7m series A round from undisclosed investors.
NeuroPhage is focused on an approach for treating diseases involving protein aggregation. NeuroPhage was founded in 2007 by a US-based team along with professor Beka Solomon, chair for Biotechnology of Neurodegenerative Diseases at Tel Aviv University. The company’s technology was licensed from Solomon’s laboratory at Tel Aviv University.