Catabasis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., today announced it has completed a $32.4 million Series B financing round led by new investor Lightstone Ventures. A leading public crossover fund and all current Catabasis investors, including SV Life Sciences, Clarus Ventures, MedImmune Ventures and Advanced Technology Ventures, also participated in the financing.

'This investment reflects our confidence in Catabasis' pipeline of SMART Linker conjugates as much as our belief in management's ability to successfully advance its clinical candidates,' said Jean George, partner of Lightstone Ventures. 'Catabasis has achieved a number of important milestones in the past year including positive data from Phase 1 studies of both CAT-2003 and CAT-1004. We look forward to working with the management team as they complete the ongoing Phase 2 trial for CAT-2003 and seek to advance the rest of the pipeline.'

Catabasis plans to use proceeds from this financing to support the development of its lead compound, CAT-2003, a modulator of the lipid synthesis pathway, which is currently in a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with hypertriglyceridemia and in combination with statins in patients with hypercholesterolemia. Catabasis also plans to use the proceeds to support the continued clinical and pre-clinical development of other SMART Linker conjugates in the pipeline.

'We are tremendously excited about the progress we've made with our pipeline thus far, having reported positive Phase 1 data for both CAT-2003 and CAT-1004 and having advanced CAT-2003 to Phase 2,' said Jill Milne, Ph.D., co-founder and chief executive officer of Catabasis. 'This financing enables Catabasis to continue to execute on the promise of its pipeline for dyslipidemias and diseases involving chronic inflammation.'

About Catabasis

Catabasis is a clinical-stage company dedicated to the discovery and development of innovative medicines to treat inflammatory and metabolic diseases. The company's drug development programs are rooted in the principles of pathway pharmacology, the treatment of diseases by simultaneously modulating more than one target in a disease pathway. Using its proprietary SMART Linker technology, the company conjugates two drugs that act on different components of a disease pathway with the goal of producing new chemical entities with significantly enhanced efficacy and improved safety and tolerability profile. The company has assembled a team of passionate and experienced scientists who are committed to improving the lives of patients. The company was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass.