Date: Jan 06, 2020 Source: (
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DTx Pharma announced today the final closing of a Series A financing totaling $10.6 million dollars. The round was led by San Diego-based FBV Fund 1 and included significant investment from Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY), Viva Biotech (Shanghai) Ltd. (HKG: 1873), Tech Coast Angels San Diego, ExSight Ventures (NYC) and additional investors with experience in the oligonucleotide therapeutics space.
DTx Pharma will utilize the proceeds of the round to speed development and deployment of their proprietary platform for delivery of RNA medicines. DTx Pharma's technology leverages fatty acids as targeting ligands to both enable cellular uptake and promote biodistribution of oligonucleotide therapeutics like siRNA and antisense. This advance allows for targeting of tissues throughout the body, opening up many new therapeutic opportunities. The company is actively developing assets for the eye, CNS and various muscle disorders.
"We are thrilled to have strong local investors such as Tech Coast Angels and FBV Fund 1 join forces with Lilly, Viva Biotech and other sophisticated biotech investors to fund our ambitions to break open new therapeutic areas for RNA medicines," said Arthur Suckow, Ph.D., chief executive officer of DTx Pharma.
"We were pleased to kick off the Series A round for DTx based upon our assessment of the potential value of their platform, the domain expertise of the founding team and the rapid progress the company has been able to make since inception. Having Lilly join the round provided welcome external validation, and has brought significant additional capital and expertise into the equation," said Jeff Friedman, MD, PhD, who serves as DTx Pharma chief operating officer and Managing Partner of FBV Fund.
As part of the round, Andrew Adams Ph.D. and Jeff Friedman M.D./Ph.D. will join Arthur Suckow Ph.D. on the board of directors. They will be joined on the board by John Grundy, Ph.D., co-founder of DTx Pharma, who is VP of nonclinical development and clinical pharmacology at Arena Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ARNA), and Tim Scott, J.D, chief executive officer of TEGA Pharmaceuticals and, chair and member of the CONNECT w/ SDVG and BIOCOM boards, respectively. Yinghong Gao Ph.D, representing Viva Biotech, and Richard Shen Ph.D., representing Tech Coast Angels San Diego, will serve as board observers.
About DTx Pharma Inc.
DTx Pharma is a privately held biotechnology company founded in August 2017 and based out of JLABs San Diego. The company was founded on the idea that the utilization of fatty acids to enable the delivery of RNA therapeutics was highly underexplored relative to knowledge of fatty acid receptor pharmacology and knowledge gained from the successful development and commercialization of fatty acid-conjugated peptide therapeutics. DTx Pharma is a graduate of the CONNECT w/ SDVG springboard program, recipient of several NIH SBIR grants and a Tech Coast Angels San Diego portfolio company. To learn more about DTx Pharma, please visit us at www.dtxpharma.com
About FBV Fund 1.
Friedman Bioventure Fund is the private biotech investment vehicle of a family office with operating businesses in both northern and southern California. The fund primarily invests in early stage companies in the therapeutic and diagnostic verticals, with a focus on platform technologies, genetics/genomics and oncology.
