Three early stage bioscience companies in North Carolina are among 16 companies from the Southeast selected to present their funding needs to potential investors at a major industry conference next month in Florida.

Achelios Therapeutics of Chapel Hill, IMMvention Therapeutix of Durham and Plakous Therapeutics of Winston-Salem will seek their first rounds of institutional investment at the Southeast BIO Investor & Partnering Forum in Coral Gables, Fla., Nov. 6 and 7.

“We are excited about this year’s group of early stage companies,” said Doug Gooding of Knowles Intellectual Property Strategies, who is co-chairing the early stage program along with Mike Dial, Ph.D., of Durham-based Hatteras Venture Partners. “They represent the Southeast region’s scientific diversity and entrepreneurial activity.”

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center, a main sponsor of the Forum, awarded a $250,000 Small Business Research Loan to IMMvention earlier this year. The Center also provided a $100,000 grant to Duke University in 2013 to support research leading to Achelios’ drug development, plus a $250,000 loan to the company that year to help fund a clinical trial for its migraine treatment.

The 16 chosen companies, drawn from six states, were picked by a selection committee of regional and national venture capitalists. All of them are developing drug therapies, medical devices, diagnostics, or other healthcare technologies.

The companies will participate in 40-minute individual private advisory sessions behind closed doors with teams of investors, business advisors, service providers and successful entrepreneurs on the forum’s first day. The four companies judged best will present to the full conference audience the next day, culminating with the announcement of an overall winner.

Here’s more on North Carolina’s entries:

  • Achelios Therapeutics, a clinical-stage specialty pharmaceutical company that is developing proprietary topical formulations of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug molecules to treat pain and inflammation.
  • IMMvention Therapeutix, a drug discovery start-up that is developing a pre-clinical pipeline of proprietary innate immunity-specific therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
  • Plakous Therapeutics, a pre-clinical regenerative medicine company that is developing Protego-PD, an acellular placental-derived platform product to treat necrotizing enterocolitis and osteoarthritis.

The Southeast BIO Forum is the largest life science and medical technology showcase in the southeastern United States. More than 300 life science and medical technology investors, corporate executives, university representatives, entrepreneurs and service providers will attend this year’s event at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.

The Forum connects life sciences companies from throughout the region with potential corporate partners and investors. Participants will see company presentations, hear expert speakers, network with others in the bioscience community and present their companies’ funding needs to venture capitalists, investment bankers and angel investors.

To date, the more than 220 later-stage and 180 early stage companies that participated in previous Forums have raised more than $3.5 billion in public and private funding.

The annual Forum rotates at locations throughout the South. Previous events have been held in Durham, Pinehurst and Raleigh.

Southeast BIO is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the growth of the Southeast’s life sciences.