In one of the largest life science venture capital financings of the year, Proteus Digital Health announced it has raised $172 million in a Series G venture round after a second close.
Its initial $120 million close, announced on June 2, was the second largest biotech deal of Q2 2014, according to the MoneyTree report, published by the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The deal would still rank second even with the additional haul, but it blows out the biggest med tech financing for the quarter by a factor of four. Due to the main product's nanosensor, patch and mobile phone app as well as its lack of therapeutic properties, Proteus is more easily identified as a med tech player than a biotechnology company.
"The digital health market is rapidly forming. Investor confidence in Proteus is driven by customer excitement, our superior board and leadership team and a unique technology platform that enables us to link one of the most valuable industries of the 20th century--pharmaceuticals--to the most important utility of the 21st: the mobile internet," said Proteus CEO Andrew Thompson in a statement.
Proteus makes the Helius tablet; a placebo pill that contains an ingestible nanosensor and is taken alongside medication. The patient wears a patch that interprets the information from Helius and relays it to the company's tablet and mobile phone app, so that the patient and selected caregivers can monitor dosing and physical activity level.
The company told FierceMedicalDevices in an email that it is distributing Helius on a limited basis in the U.K. and California. The product won de novo approval from the FDA in 2012. Proteus will use the funds to commercialize digital medicines at scale and demonstrate the benefits and cost savings achieved by its products. According to clinicaltrials.gov, Proteus has conducted or collaborated on clinical trials to treat diabetes, bipolar disorder, patient compliance, tuberculosis and schizophrenia.
Prior to the Series G, Proteus had already raised more than $200 million. Investors include Carlyle, Essex Woodlands, Kaiser Permanente, Medtronic ($MDT), Novartis ($NVS), Otsuka, Oracle and ON Semiconductor.
- read the release