Confluence Life Sciences, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the rapid discovery and development of kinase inhibitors to treat cancer and inflammatory disease, today announced a $4 million Series A venture capital financing. Proceeds from the financing will enable Confluence to advance its product candidates and leverage its proprietary technology platform to discover and develop novel therapeutics.

Confluence's Series A financing was led by DFJ Mercury, and also includes conversion of notes by the BioGenerator, Missouri Technology Corporation and the Helix Fund.

"Kinase inhibitors have become a very productive class of new drugs in recent years, and we founded Confluence to accelerate the discovery and development of inhibitors with improved selectivity and potency for novel kinases," said Walter Smith, CEO of Confluence. "With the combination of deep experience in drug development and a discovery platform that rapidly leads us to effective drugs, we have already begun to demonstrate this. This funding, along with DFJ Mercury's support, will enable us to continue this progress."

"The approaches we are using to target these kinases promise to produce drugs that will make a real difference in the treatment of several serious diseases," added Joseph Monahan, Ph.D., Founder and CSO of Confluence. "Our new and existing investors recognize this and have partnered with us to take our discovery technology and drug candidate programs to the next step, as well as to help us grow our contract research arm, Confluence Discovery Technologies."

"We are very excited by the Confluence team and technology platform, and the rapid progress the company has already made," said Daniel Janiak, Ph.D., of DFJ Mercury, a Houston, TX based venture capital firm. "We look forward to working with them to advance their product pipeline and platform."

Confluence was launched with support from BioGenerator, St. Louis County Port Authority Helix Fund, Missouri Technology Corporation's TechLaunch and Seed Capital Co-investment programs and the St. Louis Arch Angels. The company is currently headquartered within the BioGenerator Accelerator Labs at CORTEX-1.

About Confluence:

Confluence Life Sciences Inc. (Confluence) is a drug discovery and development company founded by accomplished pharmaceutical experts and using cutting-edge and proprietary methods to discover and develop novel drugs - kinase inhibitors - focused on a key class of targets that have become critical in both human and animal health care. Confluence is developing a portfolio of candidates that are first and/or best in class drugs to address major unmet medical needs in cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases, and its discovery technologies will enable efficiently adding to this portfolio as current candidates progress in development. For more information, visit Confluence's website at www.confluencelifesciences.com .

Confluence also has a wholly owned subsidiary, Confluence Discovery Technologies, Inc. (CDT) which provides high value-added biological assay development and execution for pharmaceutical development on a contract basis. For more information, visit CDT's website at www.confluencediscovery.com .