Taiho Ventures joins the existing blue chip investor syndicate of Merck Ventures, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Pfizer Venture Investments and Touchstone Innovations with an equal size of investment.
Taiho Ventures First Investment in Europe
8 January 2018, Cambridge, UK: STORM Therapeutics, the leading drug discovery company focused on small molecule therapies modulating RNA modifying enzymes, today announced that it has raised an additional £4 million of funding from Taiho Ventures, LLC the strategic corporate venture capital arm of Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. This is an addition to the £12 million Series A Financing announced in June 2016. Taiho Ventures joins the existing blue chip investor syndicate of Merck Ventures, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Pfizer Venture Investments and Touchstone Innovations with an equal size of investment. Sakae Asanuma, President of Taiho Ventures, joins STORM Therapeutics’ Board of Directors.
Following encouraging progress to date, the financing will enable STORM Therapeutics to expand and accelerate its pipeline, pursue emerging therapeutic opportunities, and build a broader drug discovery platform encompassing new drug targets from additional academic collaborators and its scientific founders.
Commenting on the fundraising, Keith Blundy, CEO of STORM Therapeutics, said: “We are pleased to welcome Taiho Ventures to our existing investor syndicate. This extended investment represents further validation and support of our strategy to harness the power of RNA epigenetics as a new area of important biology. As the first company tackling disease through modulating RNA modifying enzymes, we believe we are well positioned to build a world leading company.”
Sakae Asanuma, President of Taiho Ventures, added: “We are excited to join this experienced management team and investor syndicate to help STORM Therapeutics fulfil its ambition to become the leading therapeutics company in RNA epigenetic modulation. Our strategy is to invest globally in companies that discover and develop innovative first-in-class therapeutic products that demonstrate a clear potential to benefit cancer patients, and as our first investment in Europe we believe that STORM’s innovative approach has the potential to significantly improve the way the world treats cancer.”
