“We are delighted to have these premier life science investors supporting our Series B financing,” said David J. Earp, Circle’s President and CEO.
On Tuesday, early-stage biotechnology company Circle Pharma announced it had raised $45 million in a Series B financing.
The California-based company plans to utilize the investment for advancements in their lead program working on the development of Cyclin A and Cyclin E inhibitors for cancer treatment and expanding their pipeline.
Circle’s first development pipeline is advancing a new model in the development of macrocycle drugs that are inherently cell permeable to work against important therapeutic targets and, with their technology, they are able to address targets that have previously been considered “undruggable” using small molecules or biologicals.
Utilizing the knowledge of oncology specialists, they picked several intracellular PPI’s that play key roles in cancer to use as the target of the pipeline.
This target class has great clinical and commercial potential but has proven to be obstinate to small molecule drugs. Macrocyclic peptides, being much larger than small molecules, have the potential to disrupt the targets because they can form multiple interactions.
Because of permeability challenges, the progress being made against intracellular PPI’s has been limited. However, because of this, they are the optimal way to develop macrocycle drugs.
“We are delighted to have these premier life science investors supporting our Series B financing,” said David J. Earp, Circle’s President and CEO. “With this strong backing, we will expand our team, drive our cyclin targeted programs towards the clinic, and apply our macrocycle platform to additional intractable targets.”
This latest financing round is led by The Column Group, with participation by Nextech Invest. Investors from the prior Series A financing, ShangPharma, LifeForce Capital, and the Berkeley Catalyst Fund, joined as well. In their previous Series A financing, they had reported closing with $6.5 million. Bringing their total raised to $51.5 million.
They have also announced the appointment of additional board members Peter Svennilson, the founder and managing partner of The Column Group, Thilo Schroeder, partner at Nextech Invest, and chairman John Josey, President, Chief Executive Officer, and member of the Board of Directors at Peloton Therapeutics. They join the previously appointed members to the expanding board.
Circle Pharma will be relying on the success of future funding to continue to develop new advancements and stabilize as an early-stage company.
