Curie.Bio, the new biotech investment firm and incubator launched earlier this year by a group of industry veterans including Alexis Borisy and Zach Weinberg, has graduated its first startup.
The startup, Forward Therapeutics, is coming out of the incubator with three drug candidates for chronic inflammatory disorders. It also just closed its first major financing round: a $50 million Series A round led by BVF Partners, with participation from RA Capital Management and OrbiMed. That money should be enough for Forward to begin clinical trials — a rare feat in the biotech world, where companies often need to raise multiple private financing rounds in order to be ready for human tests.
“Usually, with Series A money, you get a development candidate, and use Series B to take molecules to the clinic,” Forward CEO Toufike Kanouni told STAT. But with the Curie team’s help, and the $8 million in seed financing it provided, Forward was able to move much faster.