Bicycle closes £40 million series B

Bicycle Therapeutics Ltd. (Cambridge, U.K.) raised £40 million ($51.3 million) in a series B round led by new investor Vertex Ventures HC. New investors Cambridge Innovation Capital and Longwood Fund also participated, as did existing investors Novartis Venture Fund, SR One, SV Life Sciences and Atlas Venture.

The company is developing short peptide sequences constrained by a chemical scaffold to create a structure with two peptide loops. The bicyclic peptides are designed to have the affinity and specificity of antibodies...