Chicago biotech startup Vanqua Bio raised $45 million earlier this month to bring a new treatment to a disease impacting 100,000 people in the U.S.
CEO Jim Sullivan said the new funding, an extension round to the Series B financing the company initially closed in 2021, sets the company up for continued success.
The company, which has relocated from Lincoln Park to a new office in Fulton Labs, previously closed $85 million in 2021 and has raised around $150 million to date.
"We did not raise $45 million at a period of time where we'd nearly exhausted that $85 million," Sullivan told Chicago Inno. "Simply put, this funding, coupled with the funding we still had from the Series B, funds the company into early 2026, and that is a strong place to be as a biotech company with a Phase I asset, particularly in this environment."
The biotech startup announced earlier this year that the first patients received its treatment for Parkinson's disease — administered to both healthy volunteers and Parkinson's patients — and Sullivan said that the extension round allows the company to achieve clinical milestones with the treatment.
He added that the molecule that Vanqua Bio is researching has potential in a range of other diseases.
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