Date: 2017-11-30
Type of information: Series A financing round
Company: Chordia Therapeutics (Japan)
Investors: Takeda Pharmaceutical (Japan) Kyoto University Innovation Capital (Japan) Mitsubishi UFJ capital (Japan) SMBC venture (Japan)
Amount: ¥1.2 billion ($ 11 million)
Funding type: series A financing round
Planned used:
- Chordia Therapeutics was launched on November 22, 2017 in Shonan Health Innovation Park at Takeda's Shonan site. The newly formed company will develop multiple preclinical assets licensed from Takeda, including CDC-like kinase (CLK) inhibitors.
- Chordia was established by six former Takeda scientists through the Takeda Entrepreneurship Venture Program initiative. This initiative was created to promote innovation and an environment of entrepreneurship by combining selected Takeda assets or technologies and outstanding scientists with start-up support.
- To accelerate drug discovery, Chordia will collaborate closely with academia. One prominent collaboration is with Prof. Seishi Ogawa at Kyoto University, a leading cancer genome scientist. He discovered mutations on splicing factors in cancer, which shed light on the molecular mechanism of cancer formation. This collaboration enables Chordia to effectively develop CLK inhibitors that modify the splicing reaction to kill cancer cells. Prof. Ogawa also discovered the molecular basis of adult T cell leukemia lymphoma. This work led to the creation of the drug discovery collaboration program among Kyoto University, Miyazaki University and Chordia, which is supported by a grant of Acceleration Transformative Research for Medical Innovation (“ACT-M”) in Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (“AMED”).
Others:
- • On November 30, 2017, Chordia Therapeutics announced that it has received approximately ¥1.2 billion ($ 11 million) in Series A financing to advance its lead asset CDC-like
kinase (CLK) inhibitor towards clinical trials and move forward other preclinical assets. The financing was led by Takeda Pharmaceutical and Kyoto University Innovation Capital (KYOTO-iCAP). Mitsubishi UFJ capital and SMBC venture capital also participated in the financing. Chordia will receive other research and development support from Takeda.
- Chordia has appointed Nenad Grmusa, Head of Global
R&D Finance at Takeda, and Hiroyuki Ueno, Ph.D., Principal at KYOTO-iCAP to its board of directors.
Chordia, will reside at the Health Innovation Park in Shonan.
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Is general: Yes
