Lux Biosciences scores $50M Series B for eye cure
In what is possibly the largest biotech investment round to date, Lux Biosciences has obtained another $50 million from its existing investors.
HBM Bioventures, Novo A/S, Prospect Venture Partners and SV Life Sciences all backed the company further. Lux is moving forward with the development of LUVENIQ, a capsule medicine that blocks uveitis, an inflammatory disease of the eye that causes about 10 percent of the blindness in the United States.
Uveitis happens when a human body’s autoimmune system malfunctions, causing it to attack its own eyes. LUVENIQ, swallowed as a capsule, has proven effective in trials and is nearing public availability. The drug calms down overactive T-cells, so they stop attacking the uveitis sufferer’s eyes.
Lux president and CEO Ulrich Grau, Ph.D., says that unlike the fastlane pace of Internet startups, it’s good in the biotech field that Lux has no apparent competitors at this point.
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About the Author, Paul Boutin
Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
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