Venture capital firm Octopus Ventures has invested a further £2 million in drug discovery and development company e-Therapeutics.

Venture capital firm Octopus Ventures has invested a further £2 million in drug discovery and development company e-Therapeutics.

The investment comes from the three Octopus Titan VCTs and the Octopus Private Investor Group as well as the firm’s EIS fund, Octopus Eureka. It consists of a private placing of 3.2 million shares at 30p and £1 million in loan notes.

e-Therapeutics will use the funding to continue development of its pipeline of drug candidates, and identify suitable acquisition targets.

Alex Macpherson, chief executive of Octopus Ventures, says the firm’s technology is capable of ‘increasing the speed to market of various treatments that will play a vital role in the fight against a number of high profile diseases including asthma, cancer, depression and MRSA’.

Shoosmiths and Wragge & Co were legal advisers to Octopus, while WH Ireland and KPMG provided financial advice to e-Therapeutics and Dickinson Dees were the company’s legal representatives.

Octopus led a funding round for e-Therapeutics in 2007.