Proceeds from the oversubscribed financing will be used to advance ArsenalBio’s lead programs, which include a handful of solid tumor cell therapy candidates.
Cell therapy biotech ArsenalBio has raised a massive $325 million Series C funding round, wrapping up ARCH Venture Partners, Regeneron Ventures and Nvidia’s venture capital arm NVentures as new investors, among others.
Also joining the round as new investors are Milky Way Investments Group, Luma Group, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Rock Springs Capital and others. Existing investors participating in the round included the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Bristol Myers Squibb, Westlake Village BioPartners, Kleiner Perkins, Byers Capital and Hitachi Ventures.
The cash will be used to fuel ArsenalBio’s solid tumor candidates that use a proprietary T cell technology. The company will also seek to boost its tools and processes for finding new cell therapies.
“Our initial clinical trials and preclinical studies have shown the promise of our T cell engineering approach and have given us the confidence to broaden the application of our technology to address additional cancer types,” ArsenalBio CEO Ken Drazan said in a statement. “This new investment enables us to continue our development roadmap, scale up our manufacturing capabilities, and invest in new avenues for innovation in T cell medicine.”
The biotech’s pipeline includes candidates for ovarian, kidney and prostate cancers. Candidates for other solid tumors are being developing in a partnership with BMS.
ArsenalBio announced in April that initial patients had been dosed in a Phase I/II trial of AB-2100 in patients with clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Heading into a crowded market in kidney disease, Arsenal is hoping to differentiate the candidate by seeking unmet needs within the indication.
The South San Francisco company’s other lead candidate is AB-1015, which is in Phase I development for ovarian cancer. Arsenal also has a collaboration with Genentech, which remains under wraps for now, but was worth $70 million upfront and in milestones when announced in September 2022.
The BMS collaboration was signed in January 2022. Financial details were not disclosed.
ArsenalBio last raised funds in September 2022, which was also a megaround with $220 million in Series B financing. At the time, the company was just planning clinical trials for AB-1015.
