A start-up Lawrence pharmaceutical firm has completed a series of deals for nearly $1.5 million in funding that keeps the company on track to create 35 high-paying jobs in the next three years.

Deciphera Pharmaceuticals officials on Wednesday completed a deal to receive $410,000 in financing from a combination of state and private venture capital funds. Earlier this month, it also reached a research and development deal valued at $1 million with a Chicago-based company. The name of the company wasn’t released.

Deciphera co-founder Daniel Flynn said the funding represented a key accomplishment and was a positive sign that the young company eventually would prosper.

“I think we have seen a lot of investors very interested in us,” Flynn said. “We’ve had several people tell us the fact that we’ve been able to raise any money in these economic times is a real testament to our ideas.”

The company in February moved to Lawrence from Cambridge, Mass., after Flynn, a Kansas University graduate, began talking with officials at KU’s School of Pharmacy. The company’s primary business is researching several proteins in the human body that could hold the key to developing drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease and several forms of cancer.

Flynn said the company expected to move in June into a renovated building at the former Oread Labs campus near 15th Street and Wakarusa Drive. He said the recent funding would keep the company on track to hire about a dozen people by June 2004.

The company, which now has one other employee, expects to employ about 35 people within the next three years.

Flynn said the majority of the jobs would be high-tech, research positions and would pay more than $50,000 a year.

Most of the funding in Wednesday’s deal came from a private seed fund, called Deciphera Investors, led by area investor Sam Campbell. The group invested $260,000, while the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. invested $100,000, and a seed fund run through KU Medical Center invested $50,000.