Mass High Tech - September 2, 2008

Hepregen handed $3M in first funding
Mass High Tech

Hepregen Inc. raised a $3 million tranche of a Series A financing of $5 million, according to online reports. The Winchester-based firm is a spinout of MIT and is developing a platform to reduce the liver toxicity caused by approved drugs. The platform is based on technology developed by Sangeeta Bhatia, an associate professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The technology is based on engineered “miniature micro liver cells.”

Hepregen was co-founded by Bhatia and Salman Khetani, also an associate professor at the Harvard-MIT HST division. Bhatia has won at least two grants from the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT for her work on the liver-cell platform.

Bhatia is also working on the use of nanoparticles made of iron oxide to detect cancerous tumors in their early stages of formation.

The the round was backed by Princeton, N.J.-based Battelle Ventures LP and its affiliate funding group Innovation Valley Partners, according to website PE Hub.

Battelle Ventures’ life sciences portfolio includes companies BioNanomatrix, BioVigilant, CDI Bioscience, Endovalve, NellOne Therapeutics, NuPathe and Panomics.