US-based biotechnology company Nimbus Therapeutics closed a $43m oversubscribed series B round yesterday co-led by Pfizer’s corporate venturing unit Pfizer Venture Investments and venture capital firm Lightstone Ventures.
Lilly Ventures and SR One, the respective corporate venturing arms of pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline, also took part in the round alongside VC firm Atlas Venture, and Bill Gates, founder of software company Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The company has also changed its name from Nimbus Discovery to Nimbus Therapeutics as it shifts it focus from development-stage to a clinical-stage research company.
Nimbus previously obtained $24m in a 2011 series A round backed by SR One, Lilly Ventures, Atlas and Gates, who co-led the company’s seed round in 2011. The company, founded in 2009 by Atlas Venture and life sciences software developer Schrödinger, has not revealed the size of that round.
Nimbus, which uses computer-driven drug design, chemistry and pharmacology to develop treatments for cancer, immune-inflammatory and metabolic diseases, will use the series B funding to advance its lead programme into clinical development.
The lead candidiate is intended for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, a liver disease affecting 16 million patients in the US alone. Nimbus will also continue development of several of its preclinical programmes.