Life Sciences, Venture Capital, Harvard

Syndexa Snags $15 Million Financing For Metabolic Diseases

Luke Timmerman 5/30/08

Syndexa Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, MA-based developer of drugs for metabolic diseases, raised $15 million in a Series B financing, the company said today in a statement on its Web site. Yalcin Ayasli, the founder of Chelmsford, MA-based Hittite Microwave, led the round and will join the Syndexa board of directors.

The company plans to use the cash to advance its drug candidates from animal testing toward human clinical trials, and to further build its discovery capabilities, Syndexa said. It is developing drugs for obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, by aiming at their underlying causes, the company said.

Syndexa announced its founding in November as a spin-off from Gokhan Hotamisligil’s research at the Harvard School of Public Health. The company took an exclusive license to the technology from Harvard, and in return, the university received an equity stake, Syndexa said. In November, it said it had raised $4 million from private investors and that it would seek the additional $15 million over the next two years.