
Jean-Pierre Sommadossi, Atea Pharmaceuticals CEO (Atea)
Pharmasset co-founder jumps into Covid-19 fight, with a new company and $215 million to get there
For 7 years, Atea Pharmaceuticals hummed along, another biotech in a city full of them, filing patents, quietly picking up a few small funding rounds for molecules targeting hepatitis, Dengue and RSV — some of the few infectious diseases that could still generate investor interest.
Then Covid-19 struck and now they’ve raised $215 million in a single round from over a dozen investors, including Bain Capital and RA Capital. They’ll use it to launch a cross-country Phase II trial testing their lead drug, AT-527, as the latest new antiviral to go up against the coronavirus.
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