Rid­ers on the storm: Ve­na­toRx bags a $42M round to back an­tibi­otics pipeline

The small group of ex­pe­ri­enced biotech vets that start­ed Ve­na­toRx took their time get­ting the lead an­tibi­ot­ic pro­gram in­to the clin­ic. But af­ter get­ting rolling with an NIH con­tract and funds from the Well­come Trust in Lon­don, they are now bank­ing a $42 mil­lion B round led by Ver­sant Ven­tures with plans to take a di­rect shot at a pos­si­ble FDA ap­proval.

“It took sev­er­al years of med­i­c­i­nal chem­istry in or­der to fi­nal­ly get the pro­file we want­ed,” Chris Burns, the CEO and co-founder at Ve­na­toRx, tells me. That wasn’t un­ex­pect­ed. The com­pa­ny, based in Malvern, PA, was launched by a vir­tu­al group of just three af­ter No­var­tis ac­quired their old com­pa­ny — Pro­tez, with a lead an­tibi­ot­ic of its own — in 2008. And this is the first time the com­pa­ny has as­sem­bled a big block of cash to fund the next leg of de­vel­op­ment.

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