Chimerix Collects 4th Round

Antiviral therapeutics developer Chimerix Inc. raised $23.1 million in a fourth round of
venture capital led by Canaan Partners of Westport, Conn., to expand development of
pharmaceutical applications of proprietary lipid technology. The company will also use
the funds to continue a longtime focus on public health and bioterrorism applications.
The round also included Alta Partners of San Francisco as a new investor, along with
returning investors Sanderling Ventures of San Diego, Asset Management Co. of Palo
Alto, Calif., and Frazier Healthcare Ventures of Seattle.

The deal brings total equity investment in the five-year-old Research Triangle Park, N.C.,
company to $39.3 million and is expected to be the final round of private financing.
Chimerix vice president of business development, Athanasios Maroglou, said the
company began preparing for the new funding round in November and met with several
potential investors in conjunction with the annual J.P. Morgan Biotechnology conference
in San Francisco in January.

“We had offers within a week after J.P. Morgan, but we tried not to get multiple term
sheets and were able to get two good groups to work together,” Maroglou said. “This
gives us enough money to last three years and will get us all the way to Phase 2 trials
when we will have options with Big Pharma partners or to go public.”

Chimerix will use the money primarily to develop commercial applications of lipid
technology for oral delivery of drugs it has licensed from others. The company currently
has three clinical programs for its lead drug candidate, CMX001, to treat a variety of
conditions and a preclinical program for a drug for the treatment of multidrug resistant
HIV infection.

Chimerix’s equity funding augments $36.1 million from the National Institutes of Health
for the development of CMX001 for prevention and treatment of smallpox as a
bioterrorism threat. Tim Wollaeger, a general partner with Sanderling Ventures and
Chimerix chairman, said the company was initially formed in April 2002 after recognizing
the potential of lipid technology developed by scientific founder Karl Hostetler and its
potential applications in combating bioterrorism. The company expanded, he added, into
commercial pharmaceutical applications after that.

“I had known Karl for a long time, and prior to joining Sanderling we had discussed the
possibility of developing oral drug delivery to protect against a variety of things,”
Wollaeger said. “But shortly after I joined Sanderling, he was invited to meet with the
Department of Homeland Security, and they were very interested even though we didn’t
really have a company yet.”

Sanderling backed a $2 million Series A round to begin work in smallpox, and the
company followed that up with a $3 million round led by Asset Management after
receiving its NIH grant and an $11 million round led by Frazier in November 2004.
Maroglou said the company still has about $24 million left of the grant money for
smallpox applications, but he added that interest in the new round was driven primarily
by commercial possibilities of its technology.

“The funds we got from the government were very important to get us to this point, but it
was definitely the commercial opportunities investors were interested in,” Maroglou said.
Seth Rudnick, a general partner with Canaan Ventures, said he was attracted to the deal
based on opportunities in a variety of areas, including bioterrorism, but that the current
funding will allow the company to generate data in humans to determine how broadly the
technology can be applied.

“We have been heavily involved in infectious disease areas and a broad spectrum of
antiviral programs, and innovative and promising antiviral agents are needed to combat
a growing number of drug-resistant viruses,” Rudnick said.

“Chimerix’s CMX001 and other clinical candidates have activity against a number of viral
targets and hold significant promise in the market and ultimately for the patient.”
Chimerix used no outside financial adviser for the round. The company had legal work
on the deal from Jason Kent and Tom Cole of the San Diego office of Cooley Godward
Kronish LLP. Dormer Stephen of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP in Hartford,
Conn., represented investors.