Pittsburgh biotech company Imagine Pharma secured a $32.5M Series A

Already, Pittsburgh’s fourth-quarter venture capital raises are blowing past Q3’s paltry total, with Series B rounds in the tens of millions for healthtech companies Abridge and Free Market Health in just the past week.

The latest entrant on the list: Imagine Pharma, an Oakland-based biotech company, has secured a $32.5 million Series A round led by IP Investors LLC. (Add it to the list of reasons why the region is growing in notoriety for its life sciences work, despite the federal government’s snub.)

The company develops therapies and treatments for diseases with fewer available medical options, and is currently focusing on commercialization opportunities related to its products. With this new funding in hand, its leaders told Technical.ly, Imagine Pharma will expand its existing programs and grow its staff, which is almost entirely based in Pittsburgh.

Imagine Pharma Co-CEO Santiago Pujadas and Chief Medical Officer and Co-CEO Ngoc Thai — alumni of Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh, respectively — said when they set out to fundraise a year ago, their goal was to find investors who shared a vision for the company and its products. Now that that task has been accomplished, their first order of business is to expand.

Pujadas and Thai consider one of Imagine Pharma’s greatest triumphs from the past year to be the development of IMG-1 polypeptide, which could treat “underserved” diseases. Additionally, both CEOs note that the successful completion of pre-clinical studies and Investigational New Drug submittal for oral erythropoietin, which treats anemia, and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists bode well for the company’s future.

The leaders are also optimistic about Imagine Pharma’s agreement for a research collaboration with fellow Pittsburgh biotech company LyGenesis, which recently secured its own $19 million investment, to discover additional treatment options for patients with diabetes, which they believe will advance drug therapy offerings for patients. This program will see expansion thanks to the new funding.

“We have a technology where we believe it’s applicable to all sorts of biologic drugs,” Thai said.

The company plans to hire three more people soon to add to its small team.

“Out of the 10,” Thai said, “it’s myself, Santiago [and] we have a general counsel, then we have our scientific team. We’re very light on the administrative but we’re very concentrated on the science.”

The positions the company plans to fill, Thai said, include two more lab technicians and an administrative assistant to handle the scheduling and growing needs for new supplies and organization.

Both Thai and Santiago say they feel confident that their company’s research will continue yielding results that improve healthcare for patients.

“Our scientific exploration and program development journeys are guided by science and the opportunities that it presents for us,” Thai said. “This approach has led to a unique oral delivery system for biologics, a novel nutritional supplement with the potential to address numerous health and wellness issues, and the ability to regenerate and propagate different progenitor body cell-types, which could hold the key to developing cures for a myriad of disease states.”

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.