Galvanize Therapeutics Merges 3 Companies, Nabs $100M

Biomedical platform Galvanize Therapeutics announced on Thursday it raised $100 million in Series B financing led by Fidelity Management and Research Company, with additional funding from Intuitive Surgical, Apple Tree Partners and Gilmartin Capital. This brings total funding to $148.5 million according to Crunchbase.

Founded just this year, Galvanize is the brainchild of Apple Tree Partners, a life science-focused firm that incubated the company. The startup was originally envisioned as three companies pursuing different medical problems, but will now be combined to use one platform for multiple use cases.

The funding will go toward commercializing the startup’s pulsed electric field energy platform to help treat cardiac arrhythmias, symptoms of bronchitis and solid tumors. The platform uses high-voltage and high-frequency electrical currents that can disrupt disease progression in the body.

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Its slew of products are in various stages of development. One, for treating bronchial symptoms, received Breakthrough Device Designation from the Food and Drug Administration and is enrolling patients for its clinical trial. Its tool for cardiac arrhythmias is rolling out in Europe. And its oncology system uses electrical currents to stimulate the patient’s immune system to attack a tumor.

“We are investing meaningfully to prove safety and demonstrate enhanced outcomes in our initial clinical targets, and we continue to explore additional platform applications,” Galvanize CEO and founder Jonathan Waldstreicher said in a statement.

A rare vote of confidence

Galvanize is one of the few companies having luck raising funding in a tight market. Most biotech companies are struggling to raise bigger rounds than their pandemic-fueled 2020 and 2021 raises and extend their runway.

Funding among U.S. biotech startups reached a record high of $77 billion in 2021, per Crunchbase data, compared to a comparatively meager $24 billion so far in 2022.

Funding will continue to slow in this space as startups and venture firms hunker down and weather this economic uncertainty, and we’re unlikely to see companies pursue new research or clinical indications for their existing products. But Galvanize’s flexible platform allows it to investigate different use cases for the same platform.

Illustration: Dom Guzman