Venture Capital Firms

VC Firms, SR One, Ltd., GlaxoSmithKline, and Excell Medical Fund Lead $40 Million in Series D Funding for Aileron Therapeutics

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Aileron Therapeutics announced that it had just just closed $40 million in series D funding with SR One, Ltd., GlaxoSmithKline, and Excell Medical leading the funding. Other investors participating are the company’s existing investors, Apple Tree Partners, Novartis Venture Fund, Lilly Ventures, and Roche Venture Fund.

Apple Tree Partners is the founding vc firm of Aileron Therapeutics, and the vc firm founded the company to develop revolutionary bio-therapeutic drugs to treat cancer. Aileron Therapeutics specialty is the Staple Peptide, which is synthetically locked or stapled to an alpha helix and has an interlocking chemical reaction as an interface that resembles the interaction of proteins.

Aileron Therapeutics was founded in 2005 by Apple Tree Partners along with doctors from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard University, there the discovery of the Staple Peptide was made.

Moneys from this funding will go to take the development of the Staple Peptides to the next step, which is the beginning of clinical trials in early 2010. Furthermore, the Staple Peptide will also be advanced in oncology, immune inflammation diseases, metabolic diseases, and infectious diseases.

According to Dr. Michael Diem, MD, Partner at SR One, Staple Peptides can be a drug that is so advanced that it can be akin to small molecules, antibiotics, and vaccines. Dr. Diem further believes that this is a powerful technology and the developments conducted by the team at Aileron will eventually change the way diseases will be treated in the future.

As far as Aileron’s CEO, Joseph A. Yanchik III, is concerned; the company has already shown in several preclinical trials that Staple Peptides show immense progress and promise to revolutionize how cancer and other serious diseases are treated. Furthermore, this funding came just at the right time and the vc firms participating in this funding are in very high standing, which is just more proof that this technology has great potential and that the team at Aileron Therapeutics is made up of high caliber people dedicated to this research.

Apple Tree Partners is a vc firm that mainly invests in companies that are in the biopharmaceutical and medical devices industries. Furthermore, the best candidates of Apple Tree Partners to invest in are those entrepreneurs who have an advanced medical product prototype that can meet some of the growing unmet needs of the medical field.

SR One is the corporate investment arm of GlaxoSmithKline, and invests in companies worldwide, who are in the life sciences industry. GlaxoSmithKline founded SR One in 1985 and since then SR One has invested more than $600 million in over 130 different companies.

The Excel Medical Fund is a vc firm that is dedicated to the development of life science technologies that can revolutionize the healthcare industry. The Excel Medical Fund has mainly invested in companies that have a unique and innovative technology or intellectual property which can serve the many unmet needs in the treatment of such serious diseases, such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, metabolic diseases, etc.

For more information about Aileron Therapeutics, click here.

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