Cambridge life science pioneer Closed Loop Medicine has raised $17 million in an oversubscribed funding round.
Chairman Andy Richards has praised the foresight of Cambridge Angels, which first recognised the potential of the business ahead of the pack.
The new investment comes from a range of leading UK and European venture capital backers. It will finance the Babraham Research Campus company’s personalised drug + digital therapy (DTx) combination products which are being developed to improve outcomes for patients and clinicians through precision dosing.
The round was led by Ananda Impact Ventures and BGF joined by a strong syndicate of investors including LifeArc, Longwall, Meltwind, IQ Capital, Downing Ventures and Cambridge Angels.
The new investment brings the total raised by the company to date to $30 million since foundation.
Closed Loop Medicine has established a proprietary platform for the creation of drug plus digital combination products – the next generation of patient centric pharmaceuticals.
The company has two products in clinical development to treat insomnia and hypertension and a pipeline of future combination products in other therapeutic areas.
This financing will accelerate the development, registration and commercialisation of its platform and precision dosing products.
Hakim Yadi, CEO and co-founder at Closed Loop Medicine, said: “We are delighted to have the support of such highly respected investors working alongside us to move forwards with our work on improving patient outcomes. We are also very pleased to welcome the experience and insight of LifeArc’s Clare Terlouw to our board.
“This financing enables Closed Loop Medicine to take the next step towards creating a new standard for the future of care for patients with long term conditions.
“Until now, precision medicine has only been applied to a handful of medical conditions. However, the ability to combine ‘Software as a Medical Device’, as a DTx, delivering behavioural therapy integrated with drug therapy, as a single prescription, is ushering in a new chapter in tailored medicine and care.”
Closed Loop Medicine chairman Dr Andy Richards told Business Weekly that the company had an exceptional proposition which Cambridge Angels recognised straightaway.
He said: “Providing the right dose of any medicine for a specific patient given the variability of individual therapeutic windows has largely been unaddressed by both the pharmaceutical industry and the clinical community.
“Through ‘drug plus DTx’ combination products this problem can be solved impacting on safer and more effective treatment of many diseases. This funding accelerates the achievement of that important goal.
“I am excited about CLM because by bringing drug and digital therapeutic elements together as one product from a single prescription it allows a set of pharmaceutical, clinical and commercial problems to be addressed –perhaps most significantly the dosing issue.
“Almost no drugs are dosed correctly at an individual patient level yet with digital technologies we can now gather data over time that allows us to titrate drugs to the optimal level for the individual patient that will improve effectiveness, reduce side effects and achieve higher levels of compliance.
“This approach can benefit patients across therapeutic areas but especially for chronic long term conditions and can be applied to many hundreds of both established medicines and medicines in development.
“I think we will look back in 10 years time and think it odd that getting to the right dose of a drug for an individual was such an uncontrolled and seemingly haphazard process.
“Hakim and the CLM team have done a great job and are now on an accelerating path towards both market and a series of pharmaceutical partnerships.
“The financing round is key fuel for that, with a really supportive set of new investors who bring complementary capabilities including LifeArc and Ananda.
“This started off as a Cambridge Angels investment when it was just a concept; Cambridge Angels has that vision and capability to back teams with great ideas even at an early stage.”
