Venture Capital

Financing for Concert Pharmaceuticals

CoNCERT Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Raises $37 Million in Series C Financing

CoNCERT Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced the closing of a $37 million Series C financing today. The Company intends to use the proceeds to further advance its deuterium chemistry platform and product pipeline. The financing was led by a leading public equity institutional investor and included participation from Adage Capital Management L.P., SR One Ltd. (GlaxoSmithKline’s independent healthcare venture fund), Mediphase Venture Partners, and Westfield Capital Management. All of the Company’s existing investors from previous financings also participated in the Series C, including Three Arch Partners, TVM Capital, Skyline Ventures, Brookside Capital Partners Fund, LP, Flagship Ventures, Greylock Partners, New Leaf Venture Partners, and QVT Fund LP.

I’d never heard of CoNCERT before this press release. I think they are a pretty interesting company. They raised $10m in series A, $48.5m in series B, bringing the total to just shy of $100m (which I assume is plenty of money for a couple of years). They have 3 compounds in preclinical development and a fourth due to enter phase I trials in 2008.

From what I can surmise, the company takes already approved generic compounds and improves their PK profiles by substituting deuterium for hydrogen in one or more bonds. The science is interesting and potentially very useful, though I wonder what will stop others from doing essentially the same thing? The chemistry can’t be that complicated. Is their platform so advanced they can predict what substitutions will yield results and thus reducing time to clinical development or is this still just a plug and chug operation?

As with every technology, time will tell but if they have some sort of novel, fast and cheap method for making and testing these substitutions, I foresee a quick exit strategy via acquisition… who knows… could be way off here.

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