Friday, October 3, 2008

MP Healthcare helps fund RNAi firm Intradigm

By Mass High Tech Staff

MP Healthcare Venture Management participated, along with a series of other private equity firms, in the $18.5 million investment in a Series B round of financing for RNAi drug developer Intradigm Corp. of Palo Alto, Calif.

Lilly Ventures led the round, and Roche Venture Fund joined MPH as a new investor backing Intradigm. Previous investors in Intradigm such as Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Alta Partners, MediBic Alliance Technology Fund, and Novartis Venture Fund also contributed. Bryan Dunnivant, a principal at Lilly Ventures will join Intradigm’s board of directors. Intradigm says it will use the fund to advance its RNAi pipeline.

Boston-based MPH has two other life sciences firms in their portfolio, Waltham-based Dynogen Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Perlegen Sciences Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. The venture capital firm was founded in 2006 and is a jointly owned subsidiary of the Japanese pharmaceutical firms Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. and Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Inc. The firm is headed by managing executive officer, Akira Shimosakon.

In June, Intradigm secured an exclusive license agreement with the University of Massachusetts Medical School for its Zamore library of siRNA sequences. The biotech previously licensed intellectual property rights to a series of biodegradable polycationic polymers for the delivery of RNAi from MIT.