Each week, we’ll round up startup news from the UNC journalism students behind North Carolina Business News Wire. To read all of the students’ work covering public and private companies around the state, sign up for the daily newsletter.
Chapel Hill-based Falcon Therapeutics raises $700,000
By Chris Roush
A Chapel Hill-based biotechnology company has raised $700,000 in a private equity stock offering, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Falcon Therapeutics Inc. raised the money from two investors.
The company is focused on developing a treatment of brain cancer with autologous neural stems cells that seek out and destroy cancer cells. It has filed two patents.
It was founded by Shawn Hingtgen, a professor in the Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics at the UNC-Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
The CEO is Karen Giroux, who has over 26 years of experience in intellectual property management, innovative technology assessment and licensing, seed stage venture fund management, early stage biotech company management as chief operating officer and CEO, and early stage biotech and biomaterials company partnering with larger corporations.
Companies relying on a Reg D exemption do not have to register their offering of securities with the SEC, but they must file what’s known as a Form D electronically with the SEC after they first sell their securities.
Durham-based Micell Technologies raises another $10 million
By Chris Roush
Micell Technologies Inc., a Durham-based biotechnology company, raised an additional $10 million in an equity and debt offering, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The company filed the Form D on April 4. In November 2016, Micell also raised $25.7 million in a private stock offering, and it raised another $6 million in April.
It did not disclose what it intended to do with the proceeds. The new investment comes from 51 investors, according to the filing
Micell is owned and operated by Arthur Benvenuto and Daniel Estay. Benvenuto, who is the CEO, has been in that role since 2006.
Prior to Micell, Benvenuto was chairman, life sciences for RA Capital Group, an advisor to venture capital firms, as well as a board member of other biotech and medical device companies.
He was also an early principal and the chairman and CEO of Advanced Tissue Sciences Inc., a public biotechnology firm focused on tissue engineering.
Micell Technologies is a medical device company that has been creating products to enhance drug delivery.
Its product, MiStent, is a drug eluting stent that is available in multiple countries across Europe.
MiStent is currently used in the interventional cardiology market, but has the ability to be adaptable to a broad range of drugs and therapeutic agents.
Companies relying on a Reg D exemption do not have to register their offering of securities with the SEC, but they must file what’s known as a Form D electronically with the SEC after they first sell their securities.
