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Print Edition StoriesMonday, August 3, 2009
Canaan backs nanomedicine firm Liquidia
By Mass High Tech Staff
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Canaan Partners has co-led a $7 million, Series C round of venture capital in Liquidia Technologies Inc., a Durham, N.C.-based company that uses nanotechnology to improve drug design and delivery. Joining Westport, Conn.-based Canaan to lead the new round was Pappas Ventures of Durham, N.C.
The Wakefield Group and New Enterprise Associates, which are existing investors, also participated in the round, which brought Liquidia’s total venture haul to $31.5 million since the company was formed in 2004 by Joseph DeSimone, a chemistry professor who holds dual appointments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.
Liquidia CEO Neal Fowler told the Triangle Business JCanaan Partners has co-led a $7 million, Series C round of venture capital in Liquidia Technologies Inc., a Durham, N.C.-based company that uses nanotechnology to improve drug design and delivery. Joining Westport, Conn.-based Canaan to lead the new round was Pappas Ventures of Durham, N.C.
The Wakefield Group and New Enterprise Associates, which are existing investors, also participated in the round, which brought Liquidia’s total venture haul to $31.5 million since the company was formed in 2004 by Joseph DeSimone, a chemistry professor who holds dual appointments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.
Liquidia CEO Neal Fowler told the Triangle Business Journal that the new funding will put the company in position to begin clinical trials on a vaccine in late 2010 or early 2011. Scientists can use Liquidia’s proprietary technology to mold nanoparticles into various shapes and sizes, two factors that determine how a particle acts inside the human body. For example, a rod-shaped particle is better suited to enter a cell than a round particle, Fowler said.
In January, Liquidia announced an agreement with Abbott Labs that grants the Illinois pharmaceutical giant a license to use Liquidia’s technology to create nanoparticles sized and shaped to precisely deliver Abbott’s therapies to specific cancer cells.
Fowler says the company has been doing its own research and development on vaccines and inhaled therapies. The company is now in the final stages of identifying a vaccine candidate. Liquidia plans to reshape and resize a vaccine already on the market, making the drug more effective. Though Liquidia will be working with a vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the company’s restructuring of that therapy will require it to go through clinical trials in humans.
Last month, Canaan participated in another Series C venture capital round, this time helping place $20 million in Relievant Medsystems Inc., a California-based medical devices company. ournal that the new funding will put the company in position to begin clinical trials on a vaccine in late 2010 or early 2011. Scientists can use Liquidia’s proprietary technology to mold nanoparticles into various shapes and sizes, two factors that determine how a particle acts inside the human body. For example, a rod-shaped particle is better suited to enter a cell than a round particle, Fowler said.
In January, Liquidia announced an agreement with Abbott Labs that grants the Illinois pharmaceutical giant a license to use Liquidia’s technology to create nanoparticles sized and shaped to precisely deliver Abbott’s therapies to specific cancer cells.
Fowler says the company has been doing its own research and development on vaccines and inhaled therapies. The company is now in the final stages of identifying a vaccine candidate. Liquidia plans to reshape and resize a vaccine already on the market, making the drug more effective. Though Liquidia will be working with a vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the company’s restructuring of that therapy will require it to go through clinical trials in humans.
Last month, Canaan participated in another Series C venture capital round, this time helping place $20 million in Relievant Medsystems Inc., a California-based medical devices company.
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