Texas-based Xeris Pharmaceuticals, which develops and commercializes novel formulations of injectable drugs for multiple indications including diabetes, recently announced the closing of a Series C financing worth $41 million.
The capital will go primarily to advance the company’s leading drug candidate, its G-Pen for hypoglycemia.
The Series C round was headed by the Redmile Group and involved some new financiers: Deerfield Management, Sabby Management, and The McNair Group, as well as other existing investors.
Xeris has also announced that Robert C. Faulkner, managing director of the Redmile Group, will join its board of directors.
Xeris’ room temperature-stable, G-Pen glucagon injection is based on the company’s XeriSol™ platform, a proprietary, non-aqueous formulation technology.
“The closing of this financing is a significant validation of our formulation technologies and allows us to accelerate Phase 3 clinical and commercialization activities for our G-Pen program for severe hypoglycemia,” Douglas R. Baum, Xeris’ president and CEO said in a press release.
“This financing also provides funding to develop our chronic glucagon programs,” he said.
Xeris’ current focus is the development of the first soluble, stable, ready-to-inject glucagon therapy for the treatment of diabetes-related and nondiabetic hypoglycemia.
Glucagon is a peptide hormone that is produced by alpha cells of the pancreas, and it raises the concentration of glucose in the bloodstream. Its effect is opposite that of insulin, which lowers glucose concentration. Glucagon generally elevates the concentration of glucose in the blood by promoting gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis.
G-Pen has the potential to be used in several ways, including auto-injectors for emergency treatment of severe hypoglycemia (G-Pen), multidose pens (G-Pen Mini), and pumps (G-Pump) for daily management of blood glucose.
As part of its pipeline, Xeris has a number of products which are in Phase 2 testing.
“While the focus is on the G-Pen program, we will create additional value by advancing our other glucagon products and by expanding our collaborations with other companies for the application of our formulation technologies to proprietary molecules,” Baum said.
