US-based antibiotics developer Macrolide Pharmaceuticals raised $22m yesterday in a series A round co-led by the corporate venturing units of pharmaceutical companies Novartis and Roche.
Novartis Venture Fund and Roche Ventureswere joined in the round by SROne, the corporate venturing arm of pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, and Gurnet Point Capital.
Gurnet is an investment vehicle of Waypoint Capital, the private asset management company of the Bertarelli family – the founders of pharmaceutical company Serono.
Macrolide, which had received an undisclosed seed investment from Harvard University’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, officially spun out of the university earlier this week. It is working on synthesising novel antibiotics to treat life-threatening bacterial infections that have become resistant to existing treatments.
The funding will go towards the expansion of Macrolide’s drug discovery platform and the development of a pipeline of drug candidates.