Ecycle Therapeutics announced today the close of $2.85 million (CAD) in financing, led by Takeda Ventures, the VC division of Takeda Pharmaceutical, with additional support from BDC Capital, Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator, and MaRS IAF.
The Toronto-based company, spun off from University of Toronto in partnership with MaRS Innovation, is a drug discovery startup seeking to generate “nacellins,” more drug-like cyclic peptides. Encycle says it will use the funding to advance its pipeline of novel therapeutics using its nacellin platform chemistry.
“Our proprietary chemistry has the potential to unlock myriad therapeutic avenues, including via intracellular protein-protein interactions that cannot be targeted with conventional therapeutics,” said Dr. Jeffrey Coull, president and CEO of Encycle Therapeutics. “This funding is critical to enable the company to further explore the vast potential of our technology and to de-risk it to the extent that major transactions will be enabled.”
Encycle Therapeutics is the first of MaRS Innovation’s six companies in the therapeutics space to raise externally-driven financing. With current partners that include AstraZeneca, GSK, Merck, Takeda, and Pfizer, the company says the new funding is an opportunity to pursue additional strategic partnerships in preparation for a Series A round.