Frequency Therapeutics, a Woburn, Mass.-based clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on harnessing the body’s innate biology to repair or reverse damage caused by a broad range of degenerative diseases, closed a $62.0m Series C financing.
The round was led by Perceptive Advisors and a syndicate that includes new investors Deerfield Management, RTW Investments and Mizuho Securities Principal Investment, as well as existing investors Polaris Founders Capital, Taiwania Capital Management, Axil Capital, and CoBro Ventures. With the closing of the Series C, Frequency will have raised a total of $147m in equity financings.
Led by David Lucchino, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Marc Cohen, Executive Chairman, Frequency is pioneering a new class of small-molecule therapeutics designed to activate progenitor cells already present within the body to create healthy functional tissues and organs. This approach – called Progenitor Cell Activation (PCA) – may bypass the challenges presented by stem cell therapies by temporarily reactivating progenitor cells already located at the tissue target site and pre-programmed to make specific cell types.
Potential applications of its PCA platform include, but are not limited to, diseases of the muscle, gastrointestinal tract, skin, and bone.
The company will use the proceeds to support the clinical development of FX-322, a regenerative therapeutic for the treatment of sensorineural hearing loss that is moving into a Phase 2a study, and to advance discovery programs in other therapeutic areas using its proprietary Progenitor Cell Activation (PCA) platform.
Frequency recently announced a collaboration agreement with Astellas Pharma Inc. for the global development and ex-US commercialization of FX-322, which included an $80m upfront payment and $545 million in potential milestone payments.
FinSMEs
24/07/2019