Protagonist Therapeutics closes $40 million Series C financing

Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc., a company developing novel, orally stable peptide therapeutics for gastrointestinal diseases and disorders, today announced the closing of a $40 million Series C financing. New investors include Canaan Partners as the lead, along with Adage Capital Management, RA Capital Management and Foresite Capital. All of the company's existing investors, including Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC, Lilly Ventures, Pharmstandard International, S.A, and Starfish Ventures also joined in the financing.

"We are pleased with the strong support received from a broad cross section of high quality investors in this financing, which has allowed us to create a well-balanced syndicate and will enable us to advance our key programs into the clinic," said Dinesh Patel, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Protagonist. "This event highlights the evolution of Protagonist's technology platform as its assets progress from discovery to clinical development, as exemplified by our first oral peptide drug candidate PTG-100."

Proceeds from the financing will be used to advance Protagonist's development candidate, PTG-100, into human clinical testing as a potential 'oral targeted therapy' for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), as well as to further the development of additional oral peptide drug candidates in the company's product pipeline. PTG-100 is an orally stable peptide therapeutic that works by specifically blocking alpha-4-beta-7 integrin, a clinically validated target for IBD. Protagonist plans to initiate Phase 1 human clinical testing of PTG-100 by the end of 2015, and progress to Phase 1/2 clinical studies in IBD patients during 2016.

As part of the transaction, the company also announced that Julie Papanek of Canaan Partners has joined the Protagonist board of directors.

"IBD and other chronic gastrointestinal diseases and disorders represent areas of growing and unmet medical need, where oral targeted therapy drugs could offer significant advantages and differentiation over injectable biologics," said Julie Papanek. "Protagonist's proprietary technology platform has enabled the company to build a significant pipeline of drug candidates that are well differentiated against both small molecule and biologics therapies."