True North Therapeutics, a US-based rare disease treatment developer backed by pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Baxalta, closed a $45m series D round on Tuesday.
Hedge funds Redmile Group and Perceptive Advisors co-led the round with investment firm HBM Healthcare Investments, investing alongside asset manager Franklin Templeton Investments and undisclosed existing backers.
Founded in 2013 as a spinout of drug developer iPierian, True North is developing drugs that will combat rare diseases by inhibiting the complement, a part of the immune system that can mediate certain diseases.
The funding will be used to advance True North’s lead inhibitor candidate, TNT009, which is being developed to treat a rare autoimmune disease called Cold Agglutinin Disease. TNT009 is currently in phase 1b trials.
The round took the company’s total funding to $142m, $40m of which came in a December 2015 series C round backed by GSK and Baxalta’s corporate venturing units, SR One and Baxalta Ventures.
The series C was led by New Leaf Venture Partners and also featured Perceptive Advisors, Cowen Private Investments, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), MPM Capital and OrbiMed.
True North closed its $22m series A round in mid-2014 with backing from iPierian, SR One, Baxter Ventures, KPCB, MPM Capital and biotechnology company Biogen Idec’s Biogen Idec New Ventures unit.
SR One and Baxter Ventures subsequently took part in the company’s $35m series B round in April 2015, which was led by OrbiMed and backed by KPCB and MPM.