By Sneha S K
(Reuters) – Mirador Therapeutics said on Thursday it had secured more than $400 million to develop precision medicines for immune-related diseases, in a rare, large early-stage fundraise.
Easing inflationary pressures, increasing bets of a soft landing and promising data from drug trials are starting to boost the biotech funding market, which saw a downturn last year along with other industries.
In 2023, venture capital deal value in the U.S. biopharma industry stood at $18.4 billion, nearly 25% lower than the year before, according to PitchBook.
“This is one of the largest series A rounds, probably in history, certainly this year,” Mirador CEO and founder Mark McKenna said, without disclosing the valuation at which the funds were raised or the breakdown of the amounts raised in the latest two rounds.
The rounds, which included seed funding, were led by venture capital firm ARCH Venture Partners, and other prominent investors such as healthcare-focused firm OrbiMed and Sanofi’s venture capital arm.
“The $400 million we raised will allow us to advance multiple internal development programs into the clinic. We have cash runway for many years,” McKenna said.
Mirador is focusing on skin, lung and gastrointestinal diseases, and would seek the U.S. drug regulator’s approval to begin human testing of the therapies in the coming quarters, McKenna said.
McKenna was previously the chief of Prometheus Biosciences, a biotech firm Merck bought for about $10.8 billion in 2023. Several other Mirador executives also came from Prometheus.
Mirador’s drug discovery platform, called Mirador360, uses patients’ genetics or molecular profile to create potential therapies that take into account differences in people’s genes, environments and lifestyles.
“Every one of the programs that we go after has to have a genetic association to the disease, and through our data set and machine learning, we can develop precision medicine strategies,” McKenna said.
(Reporting by Sneha S K in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
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