Lilly Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly, led a $25m extension yesterday to a series A round for US-based biotechnology company Symic that now stands at $40m.
Symic raised an initial $15m in a January 2015 first tranche that was also led by Lilly Ventures.
All of the first tranche’s participants returned for the expansion, including Mitsui Global Investment, a corporate venturing unit of diversified conglomerate Mitsui, and Danish state-backed Den Danske Forskningsfond.
The other series A investors are Ally Bridge Group, InCube Ventures, Purdue Foundry Investment Fund, Mission Bay Capital, QB3 Partners and a range of unnamed private individuals. Several new, undisclosed investors also participated in the extension.
Founded in 2012, Symic is developing a new category of therapies that target the non-cellular part of tissue, and it is working on candidates for conditions such as acute inflammations. The company will use the funding to advance its pipeline.
Symic has received approximately $43m in funding to date. The company secured close to $1.4m in a January 2014 seed round, after obtaining $850,000 in 2013 according to regulatory filings. US National Institutes of Health awarded Symic a $1.5m grant in August this year.