Cyrus Biotechnology, Inc., a Seattle-based biotechnology firm with a proprietary software platform for biologics discovery, today announced the closing of a $18M Series B financing and acquisition of Orthogonal Biologics, a deep mutational scanning protein engineering spin-out from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The financing includes investments from OrbiMed Advisors, Trinity Ventures, Agent Capital, Yard Ventures, Washington Research Foundation (WRF), iSelect Fund, a leading Asian private equity firm, W Fund, family offices, and individual investors. Selecta Bioscience joined the financing as a strategic investor.
“We are thrilled to bring together a range of experienced biotech investors from across the globe to support our move into independent drug discovery, ” said Cyrus CEO Lucas Nivon. “Over the last four years we have worked with dozens of companies such as Janssen and other global pharmaceuticals to advance their biologics, honing and validating our algorithms in the process.”
Erik Procko, formerly CEO at Orthogonal Biologics, added that, “By merging our company with Cyrus we can create a unified biologics discovery platform, building on Cyrus’s years of software development and business relationships to create value across a range of indications where progress was previously impossible. In some cases progress has been stalled for decades, or an effective drug has never been discovered. We can change the progress of disease for many patients and, over time, in dozens of indications where our technology offers new opportunity and hope.”
