Startups, Pharma

Xeris gets $41M for shelf-stable glucagon pen

The company's using the funding to help commercialize its shelf-stable glucagon pen for hypoglycemia in diabetics.

xeris pharmaceuticals

Austin-based specialty drug startup Xeris Pharmaceuticals just closed a $41 million Series C round to advance its G-Pen – a shelf-stable glucagon product for diabetics with severe hypoglycemia.

The new formulation is in the midst of Phase 3 trials, and the new funding is meant primarily to ramp up trials and commercialization.

“The current emergency kit on the market involves dry powder in a vial that has to be manually mixed up and is a nine-step process,” Douglas Baum, CEO of Xeris, told the Austin American-Statesman. “Ours is premixed and is sort of an EpiPen for diabetics. It’s two steps; you take off the cap and press it against the skin and it delivers the (drug) right away.”

The financing was led by the Redmile Group, as well as new investors Deerfield Management and Sabby Management and the McNair Group.

 

The company also has a number of other glucagon products meant to treat hypoglycemia that are in Phase 2 trials, Xeris said in a statement. The company also got FDA fast track status last year for an orphan form of congenital hyperinsulinism.

The company was launched in 2005 in San Francisco, but migrated to Austin in 2010 to reduce costs.

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