BIND Biosciences has a knack for selling high-profile investors on its idea of targeting cancer cells with nanoparticle drugs. The Cambridge, MA-based startup has added to its list of marquee backers with the closing of a $12.4 million Series C round of funding, according to the company.
Endeavour Vision, the Swiss venture firm, is the latest outfit to join BIND‘s investor syndicate. Eric Milledge, a venture partner at Endeavour who was in on the BIND deal, was previously the chairman of the health care systems group at Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:[[ticker:JNJ]]). BIND says that all of its previous backers—including Arch Venture Partners, DHK Investments, Flagship Ventures, NanoDimension, and Polaris Venture Partners—participated in its third-round financing as well.
The company, which has now raised a total of about $42 million, plans to use some of the new funding to usher its first drug-loaded nanoparticle into a Phase I clinical study for treating solid tumors. If the FDA gives its nod to BIND’s plans, the trial is likely to begin in the fourth quarter of 2010, says Scott Minick, the company’s chief executive. The firm is also pursuing uses of its technology—which came from the labs of founders Bob Langer, the renowned MIT biochemist, and Omid Farokhzad of Harvard Medical School—for treating cardiovascular conditions and inflammation. The firm also wants to use its nanoparticles to overcome the monster challenge of delivering RNA-interference (RNAi) drugs deep into the body.
BIND’s technology “is a true product engine,” says Minick, who became CEO of the company last year, after initially serving as an investor and board member on behalf of Arch Venture Partners. “We’ve shown already that we can develop more than 15 different
