A biotech company with offices in Canada and Chapel Hill has wrapped up a $65 million raise.
Congruence Therapeutics, a startup founded in 2021, has added $15 million to a $50 million Series A round the company disclosed about a year ago. The funding will support the biotech as it builds out as its computational drug discovery platform and its internal pipeline of drug candidates.
BDC Capital led the extension, which included participation from the company's existing investors Amplitude Ventures, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, OrbiMed, Investissement Quebec (IQ), SilverArc and others.
The new raise goes against the headwinds battering the life sciences industry, including a decline in funding as capital markets tighten up. Venture capital funding for life sciences plummeted 28 percent to $35 billion in 2022, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Prior to launching Congruence, CEO Clarissa Desjardins was the founder and CEO of Clementia Pharmaceuticals, a public company that was acquired by Ipsen in 2019 for $1.3 billion. Following this deal, Desjardins pulled together seed financing from investors in Montreal and began building out a team, which includes Michael Rock Goldsmith, the company's co-founder and chief innovation officer, who is based in the Triangle.
By founding a company together, the two executives combined Desjardins' clinical development and operations experience with Goldsmith's computational expertise.
The company of 24 employees, and five open positions currently, has established the Triangle area as its U.S. hub. Congruence set up a local office on South Hamilton Road in Chapel Hill and has three employees in the area, a number that will continue to grow, Desjardins said.
"As we continue to recruit ... we offer people the choice to go to Raleigh or Montreal," Desjardins said. "Raleigh is definitely a draw."
The Series A round will support Congruence's continued development of its drug discovery platform and help the company move its own pipeline of three programs forward, with a focus on genetic, rare and neurological diseases. The funding provides a runway that will allow the company to reach its next inflection point, which will be the selection of a drug candidate for its lead program.
This would set Congruence up for a Series B round, which will hopefully will take place in a better funding environment, Desjardins said. Longer term, if the company is successful in building a pipeline to move into the clinic, Congruence could look to access the public markets through an IPO.
"Once you're raising a lot of money, that's where you have to be," Desjardins said.