Research Park Company Lands Significant Funding

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Purdue Research Park-based Symic Biomedical has secured $15 million in financing. The funding round was led by Lilly Ventures and included investors from Denmark, Japan and Hong Kong. The company develops therapeutics for multiple conditions.

San Francisco and West Lafayette, Ind. — Symic Biomedical announced Monday (Jan. 5) that the company has secured $15 million in Series A financing. This financing will support the company's ongoing development of its novel therapeutics and advancement of its two lead programs into clinical trials. The financing was led by Lilly Ventures, and included investors Den Danske Forskningsfond (Denmark), Mitsui Global Investment (Japan), Ally Bridge Group (Hong Kong) and InCube Ventures, as well as participation by Purdue Foundry Investment Fund, Mission Bay Capital, QB3 Partners and other individual investors.

“Lilly Ventures is excited to lead this financing as we believe the new category of therapeutics being developed by Symic has tremendous potential in a wide variety of clinical applications,” said Armen Shanafelt, Ph.D., general partner at Lilly Ventures. “By targeting the extracellular matrix, a fundamental component of human biology, Symic's compounds provide a unique approach to treatment that cannot be addressed by other therapeutic modalities.”

In conjunction with the financing, Shanafelt and Claus Christiansen, M.D., chairman of Nordic Biosciences (Denmark), have joined Symic's board of directors.

Ken Horne, CEO at Symic Biomedical, said, “Securing this significant investment demonstrates our investors' enthusiasm for the Symic platform technology. It is exciting to have such a group of investors that can facilitate Symic's global ambitions. With this financing we will advance our lead programs into clinical trials, and also support our collaborative relationships.”

To date, the company has raised a total of $17.8 million in financing.

Source: Purdue University