Veralox Therapeutics, Inc., a preclinical stage therapeutics company located in Frederick, MD has received a $500,000 investment from the University System of Maryland (USM) Maryland Momentum Fund as part of a $5.4M funding round co-led by Sanofi Ventures,  the JDRF T1D Fund  and the VTC Innovation and Seed Fund, with participation from the University of Vermont Health Network, and TEDCO.

Veralox’s lead clinical product candidate, VLX-1005, addresses two immune conditions with great unmet clinical need: Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) and type 1 diabetes. HIT is a potentially fatal reaction to the commonly used blood thinner Heparin and affects approximately 100,000 new patients in the U.S. each year. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the pancreas creates little or no insulin, affecting over 200,000 new patients in the U.S. each year. A new treatment that can halt or reverse type 1 diabetes will enter a white space in the market, likely becoming a blockbuster drug. The underlying intellectual property for VLX-1005, a small molecule group, was developed over 10 years through a multi-institutional collaboration involving the National Institutes of Health, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Thomas Jefferson University, and University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Read the full release from the University System of Maryland.