US-based biopharmaceutical company Skyhawk Therapeutics has completed a $40m funding round featuring Alexandria Venture Investments, the venture capital arm of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
GreatPoint Ventures, ShangPharma Innovation and Agent Capital also participated in the round, along with private investors Tim Disney and the Duke of Bedford, and family investment firms including the Reilly Family.
Skyhawk is developing small-molecule drug therapies intended to treat neurological, oncological and immunological diseases by correcting RNA expression in the nucleus of a cell.
The equity funding was secured alongside $60m from pharmaceutical firm Celgene as part of a five-year drug development partnership for neurological diseases.
The equity financing will be used to enhance Skyhawk’s technology as it looks to bring its first cancer drug into clinical testing in 2019. It had previously raised $8m from investors including Alexandria Venture Investments, Tim Disney and the Duke of Bedford in February 2018.
Bill Haney, Skyhawk’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “We are very focused on the opportunity to build extraordinary drugs for patients.
“Through our new strategic alliance and investment round, the company is well positioned and capitalised to advance both our partnered programs in neurology and internal programs that currently focus on a set of RNA splicing-driven cancer indications.”