Euro-led investors: $37M for Galera cancer-treatment aid
Novo Ventures backs Malvern firm
Galera Therapeutics Inc., a Malvern firm developing treatments for side effects of cancer radiation, says it has raised $37 million in its second (Stage B) venture-capital fundraising from Denmark-based investor Novo Ventures; previous investors New Enterprise Associates, Novartis Venture Fund and Correlation Ventures, and the Galera Angels group also invested. Dr. Thomas Dryberg, managing partner at Novo, will join the Galera board.
While earlier first-round funding helped Galera show "clinical proof of concept" for its initial cancer therapy, GC4419, chief executive J. Mel Sorensen MD said in a statement that his firm will use the new money "to advance the development of Galera's selective dismutase mimetics," including GC4419, "into a Phase 2b double-blind, randomized clinical trial" to prevent mouth inflammation (oral mucositis) in head and neck cancer patients as they receive chemical and radiation therapy, and "to advance our pipeline of dismutase mimetics, including our first oral candidate, into other indications where dysregulated oxygen metabolic pathways drive disease."
Oral mucositis, which affects a majoirty of head and neck cancer patients, "represents a major and largely unaddressed problem" and "a significant cost burden on our healthcare system," said Dr. Dryberg in a statement. The condition can be severe enough to interrupt treatment, and "patients suffer significant pain, may develop serious infections, and may be unable to eat solid food or even drink liquids," driving them to hospitalization and surgery so they can keep eating and drinking.
