SiSaf, a UK-based drug delivery technology developer backed by specialty chemicals producer Croda International, has raised $13.2m in its series B round.
The round was led by venture capital firm Vickers Venture Partners with an investment matched by the UK government’s Future Fund.
Sisaf has developed bio-courier technology that facilitates the safe delivery of RNA therapeutics used to treat genetic conditions. It forms the basis of a pipeline of drug candidates that include potential treatments for genetic bone and eye conditions.
The funding will be used to speed up development of the company’s therapeutics and expand a pipeline of products designed to address debilitating autosomal dominant disorders, which are triggered by the inheritance of an abnormal gene from one parent.
Croda invested an amount reported by The Irish Times as $2.5m in SiSaf in August 2018, adding to $4.3m raised from Vickers Venture Partners, Invest Northern Ireland and Ulster University’s venturing unit Innovation Ulster three months earlier.
SiSaf had pulled in $3.5m of series A funding from Vickers Venture Partners, Exen Capital and Invest Northern Ireland in 2016. It received $620,000 from Innovation Ulster, Clarendon Fund Managers and unnamed private investors the previous year.
In 2013, SiSaf raised about $800,000 in a round led by Irish Technology Leadership Group’s investment fund, Silicon Valley Global Ventures. It also featured Invest Northern Ireland’s Co-Fund NI, Innovation Ulster and two angel investors.