Mirna Therapeutics, a US-based developer of cancer therapeutics, has raised $34.5m in its series C round from a consortium including local drugs company Pfizer’s corporate venturing unit as a new investor.
Alongside Pfizer Ventures in the C round were venture capital firms Sofinnova Ventures, which led the round, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Correlation Ventures and Osage University Partners, which backs university start-ups.
Elaine Jones, executive director of venture capital and worldwide business development for Pfizer, has joined Mirna’s board.
Ferghana Partners served as placement agent for Mirna’s first institutional round of funding, although the company said it had raised $1.5m of equity in August last year. Previous investment for the company came from Texas’ State’s Emerging Technology Fund ($5m in 2009) and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas ($10.3m in 2010).
Mirna was seeded in December 2007 with $3m from Asuragen, a local biotech company itself formed out of Ambion, a company formed in 1989 by Matt Winkler, then a University of Texas professor. Ambion had begun work on MiRNAs in 2002.