Dive Brief:
- Moderna Therapeutics, a biotech company that specializes in extracting protein from messenger RNA to create drugs, has raised a record $450 million in its latest round of private fundraising. All told, the company has raised a staggering $950 million from investors.
- Examples of companies that invested include AstraZeneca, which received the rights to 40 drug focused on cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and Alexion, which purchased rights to 10 programs for rare diseases.
- Many biotech companies have been raising relatively large amounts of money in the last couple of years, with investors eager to be involved in promising biotech companies. However, Moderna has raised more money in single-round funding than all the other companies.
Dive Insight:
As Forbes notes, recent years have seen massive fundraising pushes from an assortment of biotechs. In 2010, Pacific Biosciences raised $109 million in a single round of funding. In 2012, Inatarcia raised $210 million. And in 2014, Juno raised $175 million.
And now, here comes Moderna with $450 million in single-round funding. When Peter Kolchinsky, Managing Partner and Portfolio Manager at RA Capital Management, spoke to Forbes about investing in the firm, he said, "Every disease area we looked at we could find an application of the Moderna technology. What we realized is we couldn’t afford not to invest. There is a chance that the industry will be significantly shaken by this technology.”