Fibrotic disease company Blade raises $45M

Anti-fibrotic play Blade Therapeutics Inc. (South San Francisco, Calif.) raised $45 million in a series B round led by new investor Deerfield. New investors Pfizer Venture Investments, the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE:BMY) also participated, as did existing investors MPM Capital and Osage University Partners.

Blade's technology is based on work conducted by Harry Dietz, a professor of genetics and medicine at The Johns Hopkins University. According to Blade, Dietz examined pathways that contribute to tissue fibrosis and dysfunction in studies of Marfan syndrome and stiff skin syndrome, a rare inherited form of skin fibrosis (see SciBX: Science-Business eXchange, Nov. 14, 2013). ...