Milestone Pharmaceuticals, a Canada-based developer of therapies aimed at cardiovascular conditions, raised $55m yesterday in a series C round led by pharmaceutical firm Novo.
BDC Capital, the investment arm of state-owned Business Development Bank of Canada, and Fonds de solidarité FTQ, the capital development organisation for Quebec, also took part along with Forbion Capital Partners, Domain Associates, Pappas Capital, Go Capital and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management.
Founded in 2005, Milestone Pharmaceuticals is working on treatments for cardiovascular conditions. Its lead candidate, etripamil, is a fast-acting nasal spray for patients suffering from paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) episodes.
PSVT causes heart palpitations and increases the heart rate significantly to more than 200 beats per minute. The condition is not life threatening, but often results in emergency visits to the hospital by worried patients.
The money will be used to advance etripamil into a phase 3 clinical trial as well as to produce clinical and commercial supplies and to pre-launch commercialisation efforts. The money will also drive recruitment, particularly for Milestone’s marketing and medical affairs teams.
Nilesh Kumar, partner at Novo subsidiary Novo Ventures, will join Milestone’s board of directors, as will Marco Boorsma, a partner at Forbion Capital Partners, while Tekla chief executive Daniel Omstead will join as an observer.
Kumar said: “We are excited to join Milestone in the development of a novel approach for the treatment of PSVT. There is a significant unmet need in the treatment of this condition and, with strong phase 2 data, we look forward to seeing etripamil progress in pivotal trials.”
Milestone raised $17m in a 2015 series B round led by Domain Associates with participation from Fonds de solidarité FTQ, BDC Capital, Pappas Ventures, Go Capital and iNovia Capital.
BDC, Pappas and Go previously co-led Milestone’s $13m series A round in 2011 with the support of Fonds de solidarité FTQ and iNovia, after Fonds Bio-Innovation and iNovia (then known as MSBI Capital) supplied $2.6m in seed funding in 2007.
– The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global Government Venturing.