Bamboo Shoots Up With $50M Investment Boost

Jude Samulski, Ph.D.

-- Photo courtesy of AskBio

Chapel Hill gene therapy startup Bamboo Therapeutics didn’t have to go public to raise a whopping $49.5 million to advance its battle against childhood neurological diseases, according to a Form D filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Bamboo is the latest biotechnology company co-founded by entrepreneurs Sheila Mikhail and R. Jude Samulski, Ph.D., director of the Gene Therapy Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Until recently, the fledgling company has been operating as a virtual company. It has relied on seed money from angel investors, foundations and the motivated parents of children suffering from central nervous system and neuromuscular diseases. A month ago Bamboo raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CureDuchenne Ventures.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center and NCCoin will be hosting a Life Sciences Forum on Monday, Feb. 29, to spotlight the value of pursuing these kinds of disease-related venture capital partnerships.

Also in January, Bamboo purchased UNC’s Vector Core, an 11,000-square-foot facility that manufactures viral vectors for research and clinical use by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as universities and foundations. In the process, the company hired the Vector Core’s 20 employees, including Director Josh Grieger, Ph.D., who is another co-founder of Bamboo. He is now Bamboo’s vice president of manufacturing and process development.

Bamboo is a spinout of Asklepios Biopharmaceutical (“AskBio” for short), a gene-delivery technology company founded in 2003 by Mikhail, Samulski and UNC Professor Xiao Xiao, Ph.D., also a co-founder of Bamboo and an expert in gene therapy for muscular dystrophies.

It’s one of several companies spun out of AskBio, which has received more than $700,000 in grants and loans from NCBiotech to support its research and commercial development.

In fact, Samulski was recruited to UNC from the University of Pittsburgh with the help of a $430,000 Faculty Recruitment Grant from the Biotechnology Center in 1993.

According to this week’s regulatory filing, six investors participated in the funding round, though the company has not disclosed their names or affiliations.

More information about Bamboo and its therapeutic approach is contained in this feature story on the NCBiotech website.

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