Jeff Bluestone had some big goals in mind when he decided to make a switch from a decades-long career in academia and non-profit research to a biotech startup CEO. And now — 18 months after the $40 million launch party — he has a whole lot more money on hand to pay for the considerable amount of work ahead at Sonoma Biotherapeutics.
This morning Bluestone is taking the wraps off a $265 million B round after boosting the core syndicate of A-list investors he started with. Even by today’s standards, that sum dwarfs the kind of $100 million-plus megarounds that have become standard fare in biotech over the last 2 years.
It is, however, completely in line with a company that has, in Bluestone’s words, a monumental goal: “…ushering in a new era of medicine, using immune cells as living therapies that persist in the body, providing a lasting and potentially curative activity to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.”