Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Funding drugs for rare diseases
MHT's Julie Donnelly: Life science startups finding investments
MHT's Marc Songini: Mass. bio firms prep for lifting of stem cell ban
Forma Therapeutics has closed on a Series B financing that raised a total of $25.5 million. The round was led by new investor Lilly Ventures. Lilly was joined by existing investors Novartis Option Fund and Bio*One Capital of Singapore. Lexington-based Cubist Pharmaceutical, Inc. also joined as a new equity investor through a conversion of a previously issued note.
Steve Hall, a venture partner at Lilly Ventures, will join Forma’s board of directors. The Cambridge-based company has a drug discovery technology platform designed to help develop new drug targets for cancer and other diseases.
“With this new funding, Forma will focus on advancing our internal target-based oncology programs and in parallel, we will continue to pursue non-dilutive collaborations to further build our integrated drug discovery platform,” said Steven Tregay, CEO of Forma, in a statement.
More about Forma Therapeutics
Forma, which was founded in May of 2007, first announced a $25 million dollar series A financing round in January of 2009, followed a week later by a $200 million deal with the Novartis Option Fund, which gave the company its first $4 million in funding to launch.
Also in January, Forma entered a three-year collaboration agreement with Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. in which Cubist developed antibacterial compounds discovered by Forma. The deal calls for Forma to receive $14 million in upfront payments, delivery and research funding and equity; If Cubist pursues commercialization of the compounds, the deal could garner Forma another $54 million in milestones and royalties.
In July, Forma formed partnerships with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to move the health agency’s research products toward development quickly, and with Novartis AG to use Forma’s cell-based screening platform to discover inhibitors for undisclosed protein-protein interaction targets to help develop cancer drugs.
Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.
RSS Feeds
