Vima Therapeutics, Inc.

A handful of biotech startups have recently taken an increasingly popular route of financing: extending existing rounds rather than taking on a whole new fundraising campaign. If “money is like oxygen for biotechs,” in the words of Alveus CEO Raj Kannan, funding-round top-ups are a faster, easier way to catch a quick breath. Kannan’s Alveus is one of at least four biotechs that have bolstered their existing rounds so far this year. The obesity biotech is joined by blood-focused Atavistik Bio , Xolair hunter Poplar Therapeutics and movement disorder biotech Vima Therapeutics. Those four extensions have corralled $162 million collectively, or $552 million when factoring in the initial closes of those rounds. Extensions can avoid the pitfalls of launching an entirely new funding round, a process that requires a longer, more intense campaign with additional diligence and dilution to existing investors. They’re especially helpful when a massive influx of capital isn’t needed to get to key data or the next value inflection point. They are an “easy and faster way to access capital than raising a new round at new terms,” and less distracting for executives, Société Générale healthcare banker Daniel Parisotto wrote in an email. He considers them a practical solution to fix imbalances that have left many private companies “overfunded relative to public market valuations, but underfunded relative to their clinical timelines.” About 85 biotech companies have gone this route the past two years, according to a January report from Société Générale. While the deal count stayed relatively flat from 2024 to 2025, going from 42 rounds to 43, the value of those extensions vastly rose — jumping 31% to $1.53 billion. Jonathan Norris, a managing director of healthcare banking at HSBC, said in an email that extensions avoid potential embarrassment of valuation down-rounds, while giving the biotechs time to bolster their data. And he said there’s another scenario if a company’s results have been “off-the-charts good”: that “insiders get greedy and want the whole round for themselves ahead of a possible transaction.” Each funding round extension has its own flavor. The motivations behind them can vary from needing more cash to get to a clinical readout, to adding top-tier investors to curry brand-name recognition for the next capital haul, or to padding out the runway to take medicines into more indications than initially planned. Alveus first closed its Series A on Christmas week. But because there was a lot of demand in the last quarter of 2025 as biotech sentiment picked up, the company gave a 30-day deadline to investors who were already deep in due diligence, Kannan said in an interview. With that additional window, the Philadelphia and Copenhagen biotech was able to secure fuel from Jeito Capital and Novo Holdings. The money will fund clinical testing of a GIPR antagonist and GLP-1 agonist fusion protein, and an entry into the hotly contested amylin race. Extensions can also free up the management team from having to focus on fundraising. In Alveus’ case, Kannan said the business chief and chief scientific officer were “both involved quite a bit” in the Series A discussions, and now with money in the bank, they can now focus on getting Alveus to clinical readouts. Poplar , meanwhile, did its extension last week to pad the biotech’s runway with enough money to prove whether its lead anti-IgE medicine works in food allergy and have a chance of going up against Xolair. The company raised its initial $50 million Series A in October 2024, but didn’t come out of stealth until January, finance chief Vicki Eatwell said in an interview. They then extended the round last week, which will entail two tranches of $22.5 million each, the CFO said. She joined in January, reuniting with CEO Chip Baird, with whom she worked at 2seventy bio and bluebird bio. The extension also allowed Poplar to get a few “marquee investors” with experience in the public markets, Eatwell said. The startup didn’t want to “dilute our existing investors heavily” before getting to key Phase 1 data later this year. “We didn’t think it was fair to our existing Series A investors to take on $100 million right now in advance” of Phase 1 data, Eatwell said. For Vima, its $40 million extension comes about 10 months after a $60 million de-stealthing for its dystonia drug. With the extra money, the startup can now test its experimental oral medicine in patients with dystonia as well as Parkinson’s patients who aren’t currently treated by dopamine-based medicines, CEO Bernard Ravina said in an interview. The round will now get Vima through both Phase 2 studies, which will read out in the first half of 2027, Ravina said. Vima’s new investor, Frazier, heard about the biotech’s story at Atlas Ventures’ annual retreat and “things moved very quickly from there,” Ravina said.

Vima will now progress its oral candidate, VIM0423, to Phase II trials in dystonia and Parkinson’s disease. Credit: Me dia / Shutterstock.com. Massachusetts-based biotech Vima Therapeutics has extended its Series A financing by $40m to advance its investigational Parkinson’s and dystonia pill, VIM0423. This takes the company’s total funding round raise to $100m, which gathered contributions from new investor Frazier Life Sciences (FLS), as well as existing financiers, Atlas Venture, Access Industries and Canaan Partners. Vima debuted in May 2025, powered by a $60m raise with the aim of developing the first oral treatment for dystonia. Now that Vima has fresh capital to work with, the company will conduct two Phase II clinical trials on the selective muscarinic cholinergic receptor agonist in dystonia and Parkinson’s disease . Targeting muscarinic receptors, which upregulate the ‘rest and digest’ portion of the nervous system, has been proven to influence disease progression in movement disorders. However, no companies have successfully introduced an on-label drug in this class to market due to their side effects, which can impact both the central and peripheral nervous system. Vima hopes to have overcome this hurdle by designing VIM0423 to selectively target specific muscarinic receptors found in the brain, thus reducing off-target effects commonly associated with the class, such as diarrhoea and other gastrointestinal issues. Vima has already begun its Phase II study on VIM0423 in dystonia, which dosed its first patient on 11 March 2026. Meanwhile, Vima hopes to begin its Parkinson’s study in mid-2026. The biotech expects both studies on the therapy to produce topline data in the first half of 2027. GlobalData Strategic Intelligence US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate? Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis. By GlobalData Learn more about Strategic Intelligence Addressing treatment gaps in dystonia While there has been some progress in treating dystonia, its heterogeneity often makes it challenging to find options that work for all patients. As a neurologist, Bernard Ravina, founder and CEO of Vima, notes that he has observed the gaps and limitations of current treatment options, which he says often fail to address symptoms that impact daily function. “Dystonia and Parkinson’s share underlying disease biology driven by an imbalance in dopamine and acetylcholine signalling in the brain, and our results reinforce that we are on the right path to modulate this biology,” Ravina commented. Currently, dystonia treatment primarily revolves around botulinum toxin (botox)-based treatments, as well as combination treatments employing injectables and oral medications. According to GlobalData’s Pharmaceutical Intelligence Center, there are 24 ongoing clinical trials in Phase I to III exploring the potential of therapies in dystonia . GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical Technology . While a large proportion of these trials are looking at variants of botox, there are also some dopamine agonists, vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2) inhibitors and combination treatments progressing through the pipeline.

Less than a year after raising $60 million for its dystonia candidate, Vima Therapeutics is back for more. The company on Wednesday added $40 million in a series A extension, led by Frazier Life Sciences, that will help it broaden the clinical programme for VIM0423 into Parkinson's disease. An oral muscarinic cholinergic receptor antagonist, VIM0423 is designed to block the specific receptors in the brain involved in dystonia — a chronic movement disorder characterised by involuntary muscle contractions — while minimising both central and peripheral off-target side effects. Vima said Wednesday it has dosed the first patient in the Phase II Stride Dystonia study.According to CEO Bernard Ravina, dystonia shares an underlying hypercholinergic biology with other movement disorders like Parkinson’s. "Despite many approved therapies, many Parkinson's patients continue to have movement symptoms that do not respond to existing medicines, leaving them with symptoms that severely impact daily life," Ravina told FirstWord. "Targeting muscarinic receptors in the brain may be a way to specifically address certain symptoms and provide a novel oral treatment.Findings from Phase I trials of the candidate fueled the round's extension and prompted the company to lay plans for a Parkinson's clinical programme, Ravina added. In the two-part Phase I study of VIM0423, the candidate was well-tolerated and exceeded target exposure levels, suggesting its potential to address the underlying cause of dystonia."Our thesis and clinical validation resonated quickly and clearly with Frazier," Ravina said. "We believe the total addressable population of patients that may be served by VIM0423 is up to 1 million in the US alone."Wednesday's financing was also backed by existing investors Atlas Venture, Access Industries and Canaan Partners.Vima plans to start a Phase II study of VIM0423 in Parkinson's disease mid-year, and topline data from the trial, as well as the Stride Dystonia study, are due in the first half of 2027.