Atlas Backs ProtAffin

Waltham, MA-based Atlas Venture and Conshohocken, PA-based SR One, the venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline, co-led a €14.1 million ($18.4 million) Series B round of financing for ProtAffin, according to an announcement from the Austrian biotech startup. Return backers Aescap Venture, Entrepreneurs Fund, and Z-Cube joined the deal, the proceeds from which will be used to help move ProtAffin’s lead drug, an anti-inflammatory, through Phase I clinical testing and to expand the application of the startup’s platform for discovering protein drugs that target cell-surface sugars into oncology.

Author: Rebecca Zacks

Rebecca is Xconomy's co-founder. She was previously the managing editor of Physician's First Watch, a daily e-newsletter from the publishers of New England Journal of Medicine. Before helping launch First Watch, she spent a decade covering innovation for Technology Review, Scientific American, and Discover Magazine's TV show. In 2005-2006 she was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rebecca holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Brown University and a master's in science journalism from Boston University.