Quartet Medicine, a US-based developer of therapies to treat chronic pain and inflammation, closed a series A round backed by pharmaceutical firms Novartis and Pfizer at $23.3m yesterday.
Novartis Venture Fund and Pfizer Venture Investment, respective corporate venturing arms of Novartis and Pfizer, and Partners Innovation Fund, which is backed by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, contributed funds to a $17m first tranche in October 2014.
The first tranche was led by venture capital firm Atlas Venture, which had also provided an undisclosed amount of seed funding for Quartet in 2013 that helped spin the company out of Boston Children’s Hospital and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
The $6.3m extension was provided by venture capital firm Remeditex Ventures and two undisclosed Shanghai-based investors.
Quartet is developing treatments for chronic pain and inflammation, exploiting the discovery that a naturally occurring chemical compound known as tetrahydrobiopterin plays a critical role in managing those conditions.
The series A capital will enable Quartet to advance its first candidate through early clinical testing over the next two years.