Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Selecta Biosciences lands $15.1M in Series B

By Mass High Tech staff

Selecta Biosciences Inc., a Watertown immunology treatment developer, has pulled in $15.1 million in a Series B round of funding, the company announced. Investors in the round include return backers Polaris Ventures and Flagship Ventures, as well as NanoDimension Inc. and Harvard University professor Timothy Springer.

Selecta makes what the company refers to as nanoparticle immunomodulatory drugs to treat human disease. The company’s three-pronged development platform -- nanotechnology, immunobiology and targeted drug delivery -- is the basis of work conducted by MIT’s Robert Langer and Harvard Medical School’s Omid Farokhzad and Ulrich von Andrian.

Langer is an MIT Institute Professor, the winner of the 2008 Millennium Technology Prize and a 2004 Mass High Tech All-Star. Farokhzad is a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. And von Andrian is considered a leader in the field of immunology at Harvard Medical School.

Langer and Farokhzad have worked together on another venture as well. In 2006, the pair founded Bind Biosciences Inc., which develops nanoparticle technology that concentrates a drug at the intended site of action while minimizing exposure to the rest of the system, improving efficacy and reducing side effects. The company received $2.5 million in seed funding from Polaris and Flagship.

Selecta Biosciences received $2.5 million in seed funding last May, also from Polaris and Flagship.