US-based pain and inflammation drug developer Nocion Therapeutics has launched with $27m in series A funding from investors including Partners Innovation Fund, the corporate venturing arm of healthcare system Partners Healthcare.
F-Prime Capital Partners, a subsidiary of investment and financial services group Fidelity, co-led the round with venture capital firm Canaan, and it also featured VC firm BioInnovation Capital.
Nocion is working on a class of small molecule sodium channel inhibitors called nocions to help treat major medical irritants such as pain, itching, coughing and inflammation.
The nocions would be charged so they selectively pass through large-pore channels that lead to the sensory neurons responsible for irritation after they are activated by harmful stimuli.
The approach is intended to reduce the need for conventional local anaesthetics that cause numbness and loss of motor function. The series A capital will help the company optimise and expand its range of nocion candidates for multiple indications ahead of proof-of-concept clinical testing.
Nocion Therapeutics builds on academic work started by two of its co-founders, both members of Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute: Bruce Bean, the Robert Winthrop professor of neurobiology, and Clifford Woolf, a professor of neurobiology and of neurology who is also the director of Boston Children’s FM Kirby Neurobiology Center.
Bean and Woolf’s research was supported by Harvard University’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator and the Technology Development Fund at Boston Children’s, with both programs offering access to financial support and other tech transfer-focused expertise.
Nocion received an undisclosed amount of seed financing in the first quarter of 2018, and Tom Beck, executive partner at F-Prime Capital Partners, and Canaan partner Julie Grant were identified by the company as early supporters.
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.