PureTech Announces $50M in New Funding Round, Bringing Total Raised in Last Four Months to $107M

BOSTON, Jan. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- PureTech, a science and technology R&D company tackling big problems in healthcare, announced today the closing of a $50 million growth stage investment round from existing investors. This fundraising builds on the company's $57 million funding round in October of 2014 and brings the total raised in the last four months to $107 million. The funding will be used to further expand PureTech's pipeline of disruptive technologies and propel PureTech's maturing pipeline programs toward commercialization.

"PureTech generates big ideas that are generally ahead of how the industry is thinking," said Dr. Robert Langer, PureTech Co-founder, Senior Partner & MIT Institute Professor, "It's exciting to see that a number of these truly innovative approaches are generating proof of concept in validating studies and the recent institutional financing is a further recognition of this potential."

PureTech has 12 pipeline programs and three active sourcing initiatives. Each of the company's pipeline programs is structured as an independent corporate entity, in which PureTech typically has a majority ownership interest. PureTech's pipeline includes companies such as:

• Vedanta Biosciences, developing microbiome derived therapies for treating infectious disease, allergies and autoimmune disorders;
• Entrega, Inc., developing a delivery platform for oral delivery of injectable drugs like insulin;
• Gelesis, a clinical stage company developing an innovative treatment that swells in the stomach and small intestine to induce weight loss and improve glycemic control; 
• Tal Medical, a clinical stage company focused on "rebooting" electrical circuits in the brain to treat depression;
• Karuna, a clinical stage company developing a novel mechanism-of-action therapeutic for treating the devastating illness of schizophrenia;
• Follica, a clinical stage company, harnessing advances in epithelial stem cell biology to develop novel treatments for baldness; and
• Akili Interactive Labs, a clinical stage company developing an "electronic medicine" platform for remotely diagnosing and treating cognitive disorders like ADHD, autism spectrum disorders and Alzheimer's disease;

About PureTech

PureTech is a science and technology research and development company with the mission of developing and commercializing breakthrough technologies aimed at solving major healthcare problems. Based in Boston, PureTech has an outstanding team of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs and is connected to top tier academic institutions. PureTech has a thematic, problem-driven approach to developing its programs, proposing non-obvious solutions rooted in academic research and developing them together with a creative group of cross-disciplinary experts. PureTech concentrates on a handful of major initiative areas at a time, generates and proactively identifies and reviews ~800 technologies per year, and seeks to select only the most technologically and commercially promising programs to advance. PureTech has active strategic partnerships with forward thinking health and technology companies, PureTech's investors include institutional investors like Invesco Perpetual, strategic investors, endowments and founders and senior leaders of major healthcare and technology companies.

SOURCE PureTech