PhaseBio Adds $25M to Till
PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, an 8-year-old Morrisville drug-development firm whose start-up was supported by three loans from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, has landed $25 million in new Series B venture funding.
The funding round comes on top of an ongoing series of multi-million-dollar venture investments to help the firm commercialize its technology aimed at reducing the cost of drug development and improving existing biological drugs. Its technology is licensed in part from Duke University.
The Biotechnology Center has also provided grant funding to Duke's Lori Setton, Ph.D., to support her work linked to PhaseBio technology.
Setton and colleagues at Duke are developing injectable "drug depots" capable of keeping anti-inflammatory drugs within osteoarthritic joint spaces. That's to reduce the number of injections needed for pain relief and to reduce side effects by keeping the medicine where it's needed.
The Biotechnology Center's direct loans to help build PhaseBio have included:
A $15,000 loan in 2002 to support a market assessment of its drug-delivery technology.
A $75,000 Small Business Innovation Research Bridge loan in 2005. The SBIR Bridge Loan Program helps companies maintain technology-development momentum through the inevitable gap between the finish of Phase I of a federal SBIR-funded project and receipt of Phase II funding.
A $150,000 Small Business Research loan in 2006. The SRL program supports applied research critical to the development of products, processes, services or tools with clear commercial potential.