Venture capital firm Frazier Healthcare Partners has spun out a US-based antibiotics developer with the help of grant funding from a Boston University-operated body and a $8.5m series A round.

Healthcare-focused venture capital firm Frazier Healthcare Partners has spun out US-based antibiotics developer Recida Therapeutics with a grant from Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (Carb-X), an international research funding body operated by Boston University. Carb-X’s award of up to $4.4m will complement capital from Recida’s $8.5m series A financing round, led by Frazier Healthcare Partners with backing from undisclosed additional investors. Recida Therapeutics’ lead asset, RC-01, is designed to treat serious antibiotic-resistant infections where gram-negative bacteria resilient to an array of existing drugs are free to thrive and endanger the patient. RC-01 focuses on inhibiting bacterial LpxC, an enzyme crucial to the biosynthesis process Lipid A, which forms part of the outer membrane on gram-negative bacteria and is thus crucial for their survival. Recida Therapeutics expects to apply to US regulator Food and Drug Administration for investigational new drug status for RC-01 by the end of the first quarter of 2019. The company holds rights to RC-01 for all territories apart from Japan having licensed them from Fujifilm Toyama Chemical, a pharmaceutical business operated by imaging and information technology firm Fujifilm formed from the merger of Toyama Chemical and Fujifilm Ri Pharma in October 2018. In the greater China region, a term generally used to describe territories sharing Chinese commercial or cultural ties, Recida has joined forces with antibiotics developer MicuRx Pharmaceuticals to guide RC-01’s route to market. Recida Therapeutics previously disclosed $5.7m from undisclosed investors in July 2018 made up of equity and the conversion of existing notes, according to a regulatory filing. David Socks, venture partner at Frazier Healthcare Partners, said: “In order to meet the critical and growing unmet need for novel antibiotics, it is essential to collaborate broadly to advance promising compounds like RC-01.”

Subscribe to go deeper

GCV subscribers get access to all our proprietary data and deep-dive articles, as well as the global directory of CVC investors.



Not sure if you have a subscription?