US-based biotechnology company Pronutria Biosciences closed a $39m series C round yesterday that was led by diversified financial services provider Fidelity Mangement and Research.
The round also included Flagship Ventures, the venture capital firm that closed a $537m fund in March this year, following investments by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, nutritional therapy developer Nestlé Health Science and agribusiness Bayer CropScience.
Additional unnamed investors also participated in the round. Pronutria is developing treatments for a range of conditions, including muscle, metabolic, neurological and liver disorders.
The company’s therapies address imbalances in amino acids which form the basis for proteins, which are essential to the proper functioning of cells.
Flagship Ventures’ incubator, Flagship VentureLabs, led a $12.25m series B round for Pronutria in February 2014 that also featured other, undisclosed investors. VentureLabs also provided $10.8m in series A funding for Pronutria when it graduated from the incubator in 2013.
Robert Connelly, president and chief executive of Pronutria, said: “We have amassed a significant amount of promising preclinical and clinical data from a pipeline of candidates spanning multiple conditions.
“With these funds, we are now in a position to aggressively advance multiple programmes in areas of high unmet nutritional and medical need.”