Aegle Therapeutics, a Miami biotechnology startup, today announced that it has closed a $6.5 million Series A round of financing.
Investors in this round included Tellus BioVentures, DEFTA Healthcare Technologies, and Florida funds New World Angels and DeepWork Capital. Aegle also raised $4 million in January and in total has raised $10.4 million, according to Crunchbase.
Aegle Therapeutics is developing a therapy initially to treat dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, a rare pediatric skin blistering disorder. Aegle, which also has offices in the Boston area, is developing extracellular vesicles, including exosomes, secreted by mesenchymal stem cells as therapy for the treatment of dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa and other severe dermatological conditions. Aegle anticipates entering the clinic with AGLE-102 in early 2021.
Aegle, founded in 2013, is led by Shelley Hartman, who has been CEO since 2014 and became Chairman in January 2020. Prior to Aegle, Hartman served for nine years as CEO of LifeSync Corporation, a startup medical device company developing and marketing wireless medical technology to hospital customers.
“Aegle has built an excellent team with the capability of advancing AGLE-102, a unique combination of protein therapy, RNA therapy and regenerative medicine, into the forefront of cell-free therapy,” said Lonnie Moulder, founding partner of Tellus BioVentures.
In South Florida, biotech and life science are part of the metro area’s most-active venture capital sector in South Florida: healthcare. In the first half of this year, 37% of the deals were from the healthcare space – health-tech, biotech and life sciences, pharma, medical devices and services.
Aegle also announced that Heidi Kempinski was named as Senior Vice President, Head of Operations. Kempinski brings over 25 years’ experience in global drug development to Aegle, most recently at GSK where she served as VP of Business Operations and Strategic Alliances.
Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter and email her at [email protected]
