After showing off its drug delivery technology at a national biology conference in late July, Mercury Bio announced it raised $2 million in a move that could signal rapid growth for the Santa Fe-based biotech startup.
The startup, which changed its name in 2022, closed the $2 million seed financing round — typically the earliest stage of venture funding for companies — in early June. That close came just under two months before its Chief Science Officer Richard Sayre, Ph.D., presented Mercury Bio's biomolecular drug delivery platform at the mRNA-Based Therapeutics Summit, a large gathering of bioscience professionals — including those from companies like AstraZeneca and Moderna — held in Boston.
The Boston summit was the first time the Santa Fe startup had shown off its biotechnology, which it calls its "yEV." That stands for "chimeric extracellular vesicles," a drug delivery system that involves drug encapsulation in natural nanoparticles and cell-specific targeting. Those "vesicles" can be delivered in different ways, according to Mercury Bio's website, including as an injectable or a probiotic.
Prior to that, the startup had largely operated in "stealth mode," Mercury Bio's CEO Bruce McCormick told Albuquerque Business First. He said all of the folks the startup met at the conference, including "senior level scientists" at large pharmaceutical and biotech companies, expressed excitement about Mercury Bio's approach to drug delivery.
"I didn't expect that," McCormick said. "You typically expect some naysayers, and we just didn't have that. We were somewhat of a breath of fresh air in terms of we really are approaching a solution to what is a well-recognized problem."
McCormick said Mercury Bio plans to develop collaborative partnerships with biotech and pharma companies that are developing new drugs. Those companies would work with the Santa Fe startup to integrate its drug delivery platform into their methodology for getting their new drugs to targets, he said.
Mercury Bio found the first of those revenue-generating partnerships with Himed, a biotech company based in Old Bethpage, New York. That partnership will see the Santa Fe startup's platform brought to the orthopedic field to help speed healing and reduce the risk of complications after surgeries.
Dana Barnard, Himed's CEO, was named on a Feb. 16 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Mercury Bio. "Mercury Bio's technology is completely innovative — we think this collaboration has great potential and could chart new directions in bone repair," he said in a statement.
McCormick said Mercury Bio is currently in negotiations with one major pharma company, alongside five small- to medium-sized biotech companies, for other partnerships. He didn't provide the names of any of those companies; revenue from future partnerships could be "significant" for the startup and would vary based on the scope and type of the work, he added.
Landing those partnerships could be a major part of "rapid" growth for the company, McCormick said.
"Our business model will allow us to engage in a significant number of collaborative partnerships, but there's always space, time, human resources, equipment, etcetera, to grow," he said.
To fuel that growth, McCormick said Mercury Bio wants to raise around $20 million in a Series A investment round — a financing stage typically used to help proven companies scale — as a follow-on from its $2 million seed round. He said the startup is in the early stages of finding investors for that round and added the seed round was majority invested in by private investors in New Mexico.
And, as another mark toward Mercury Bio's plans going forward, the startup brought on John Tomes as its finance director. Tomes most recently worked at Hawthorn Equity Partners, a private equity firm based in Chicago, as a senior partner; he was also a managing director at GE Capital, the financial services division of General Electric (NYSE: GE).
"We need a professional that has that type of experience, which he has," McCormick said about Tomes's investment financing experience. "And he sees the potential for this to be quite a significant company.
"The next round of $20 million, that's an important amount of money, but the company can grow dramatically beyond that range," he continued.
The startup currently operates out of about half a dozen labs at the Santa Fe Business Incubator and employs about 15 people. But McCormick said Mercury Bio could quickly outgrow that space and said the company is "actively" searching for new space that would allow it to expand. Its eyes are solely on New Mexico, and Santa Fe in particular.
"All our key scientists are here, nobody's leaving. That's an absolute requirement for funding," McCormick said. "We are not taking money that's going to make us move somewhere else."
