Annovation Adds $8M to Develop Safer, More Precise Anesthesia

Annovation BioPharma is announcing today that it has raised $8 million in a Series A funding to put toward the development of new therapies for anesthesia and critical care. The money comes from return seed investors, Cambridge, MA-based Atlas Venture and Partners Innovation Fund, as well as new strategic investor The Medicines Company (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MDCO]]).

The round could hit a total of $11 million through additional investments from the syndicate, and will go toward pre-clinical and clinical development of Annovation’s technology, which is designed to administer anesthesia more safely and more precisely to patients than traditional methods, according to the release. The experimental drugs could also enable patients to transition more quickly out of anesthesia after surgery. The technology was developed at Massachusetts General Hospital in Douglas Raines’s Laboratory in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine.

David Grayzel, managing director of Atlas Venture Development Corp., will serve as executive chairman of the startup, and joining the startup’s board will be Jean-Francois Formela of Atlas Venture, Jason Campagna of The Medicines Company, and Carl Berke of Partners Innovation Fund. The Atlas Venture Development Corp is an initiatve that partners with biotech and pharmaceutical companies to advance technologies at the late pre-clinical and clinical stages.

Annovation plans to run a clinical trial in the first half of 2013, after which The Medicines Company will have the option to acquire the startup at pre-negotiated terms, which include milestones and royalties.

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.