Nottingham spin out raises GBP650K in third round of funding

Critical Pharmaceuticals Ltd, a drug delivery specialist spun out from Nottingham University, closed a third round of £650,000 from new and existing investors.

The company has now raised in excess of £2 million in investment and grants since its formation in 2004. The funding follows the recent announcement of preclinical results for a sustained release formulation of the human growth hormone somatropin, which demonstrated considerable advantages over existing once-daily products.

Lisbeth Illum, CEO said, “The new funds will be used to advance the development of our pipeline of candidate drugs and drug delivery technologies, secure and develop our intellectual property portfolio and invest in our business development capability to secure partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.”

“We are attracting growing interest from leading names who can see the advantages of using our drug delivery technology platforms across their drug pipelines.”

Jonathan Earl, Investment Director, Catapult Venture Managers said, “The CriticalMix drug delivery technology not only provides pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with the opportunity to enhance their own products, but also opens the possibility of Critical developing its own pipeline of differentiated drug products.

Critical’s drug delivery technologies allow for the sustained release and nasal delivery of proteins and peptides and labile or insoluble small molecules. The company was founded by Steve Howdle in 2002 based his observation that supercritical carbon dioxide was able to liquify certain polymers. These liquid polymers are used to encapsulate thermally labile or solvent sensitive drugs to create injectable sustained-release products.