Novira Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held antiviral drug discovery company developing innovative, first-in-class therapeutics for the treatment of viral diseases, including HBV and HIV, announced that it has completed a second round of seed financing that brings the company’s early financing to approximately $2.5 million, with another $1.0 million obtained in non-dilutive grants.

The financing was led by three of Philadelphia’s active angel groups, Delaware Crossing Investor Group, the Mid-Atlantic Angel Group Fund II (MAG II Fund) and Robin Hood Ventures.  BioAdvance, the initial investor in the company also participated in the round. Gregory Harriman, M.D., member at Robin Hood Ventures will join Novira’s board of directors as the Board designee for the angel syndicate, and Karen Griffith Gryga, Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Angel Group (MAG) Funds (I & II) will take a board observer position.

“This round of financing will help enable Novira to complete optimization work on our lead program to develop new drugs that promise to significantly improve treatment of chronic hepatitis B infection, a significant worldwide concern with more than 350 million patients who suffer from chronic disease” said Osvaldo (Lalo) Flores, PhD, chief scientific officer and co-founder of Novira. “We are grateful to have early investors who share in our vision and can help us quickly advance our capsid assembly inhibition technology towards the clinic.”

“From our very first meeting with Novira, our investment groups were very intrigued by their exciting technology, as well as their management team’s extensive industry experience,” stated Gregory Harriman, MD, who co-led the deal with J David Owens from the Mid-Atlantic Angel Group Fund and Delaware Crossing Investor Group. “We believe Novira is a front-leading company in this new area of capsid inhibition and we can envision a strategic partner who is attracted to the HBV and HIV programmes in the not too distant future,” added J David Owens (chief business officer), who joins the Novira management team along with Ali Munawar (vice president, Research Operations, co-founder) and George Hartman, PhD (vice president, Chemistry, co-founder).“Novira was launched in 2009 with seed funding from BioAdvance and the team has already demonstrated its ability to create value in a capital efficient way.   Given the challenging fund-raising environment for start-up companies, we’re delighted to have the support of the three angel funds, which represent an increasingly important segment of the capital landscape in the region,” adds Barbara Schilberg, CEO of BioAdvance and a Novira Board member.

Novira’s HBV and HIV antiviral drugs bind to and disrupt the function of a virus protein called “capsid” or “core”. The capsid protein forms a shell that protects the viral genome as the virus replicates and is transmitted. The capsid protein plays multiple essential roles in the virus life cycle including assembly of new viral particles and disassembly of the particle after the infection of a new cell.

BioAdvance has committed  $20 million to 29 seed stage life sciences companies and 15 pre-seed projects.

Delaware Crossing Investor Group is a network of former and current executives and entrepreneurs who provide counsel and capital to early-stage and other growth-oriented companies.

Robin Hood Ventures is a group of angel investors, focused on early-stage, high-growth companies in the Greater Philadelphia region. We help entrepreneurs build great companies, providing capital, mentoring, expertise and connections to help companies reach their potential. Robin Hood generally invests $250k to $500k, and collaborates with angels, institutions and VCs in our network.

The Mid-Atlantic Angel Group Funds I & II, LP (MAG I & II) were created to bridge the gap between angel funding and institutional venture capital funding serving the Greater Philadelphia Region.