There’s money on the move and venture capital firms launch several biotech companies with hefty Series A financing rounds. Here’s a look.
There’s money on the move and venture capital firms launch several biotech companies with hefty Series A financing rounds. Here’s a look.
Esker Launches with $70 Million Series A
San Francisco-based Esker Therapeutics, a Foresite Labs-incubated company, launched with a $70 million Series A financing. The round was led by Foresite Capital. The company focuses on autoimmune diseases and so-called precision therapies that target patients most likely to benefit from them.
The company’s precision analytics platform is powered by Foresite Labs. The technology platform is made up of high-quality curated genetic, clinical and medical record data, a systems immunology approach for prospective data collections and tools for building patient registries. Its lead pipeline product is ESK-001, a highly selective TYK2 inhibitor with greater selectivity for TYK2 over JAK1, initially in development for psoriasis. It is currently in a Phase I trial.
“Autoimmune diseases are the third most common cause of chronic illness,” said June Lee, founder, president and chief executive officer of Esker. “In the U.S. alone, they impact 25 million people and cost more than $100 billion annually. While several targeted therapies have emerged in recent decades, response rates to treatments are low, and there remains a significant need for treatments that are specific to certain patient populations and that can be tolerated over long periods of time. Our goal at Esker is to rewrite the autoimmune treatment playbook by developing the right medicine for each patient.”
Mogrify Completes $33 Million Series A
Based in Cambridge, England, Mogrify Limited announced the second closing of its Series A financing of $17 million, bringing the total raised to $33 million in this round. The funds will be used to support its immuno-oncology and ophthalmology programs and to develop its platform for cell reprogramming. The second close was led by Parkwalk Advisors, with additional funding from Astellas Venture Management, 24Haymarket, Jonathan Milner, co-founder of Abcam, and Darrin M. Disley, chief executive officer of Mogrify.
Disley said, “We are delighted to see the continued support of our existing investors, as well as welcome new investors Astellas Venture Management and Dr. Jonathan Miler, in support of the progression of our initial programs through to IND-enabling studies.”
Isolere Bio Raises $7 Million Seed Funding
Duke University spinout Isolere Bio, based in Durham, North Carolina, announced $7 million in Seed funding from lead investor Northpond Ventures. The funds will be used for development, scaleup and commercialization of its purification technology for adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors.
AAV vectors are used in a broad range of cell and gene therapies, as well as in some vaccine technologies, and make up about 40% of the viral vector market. Isolere says the financing will allow it to expand to other viral vectors, along with mRNA, which will likely grow after the success of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. The company is also expanding it staff, looking to add scientists and engineers.
The company was founded in 2017 by Ashutosh Chilkoti, Kelli Luginbuhl, and Joe McMahon. They began with small business grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the North Carolina Biotech Center.
“We are thrilled to be teaming up with a top-tier, science-driven investor who believes in and shares our mission of delivering technologies for a healthier and safer world,” said Luginbuhl, who is also the chief executive officer. “With this new funding, we will be able to grow our team, diversity product development, and robustly demonstrate how our technology solves major biomanufacturing problems from the lab bench to commercial scale.”
BridGene Closes on $12 Million Series A
Sunnyvale, California-based BridGene Biosciences raised $12 million in a Series A private financing round. It was led by Wedo Venture Partners with participation by Kaitai Capital and Takeda Ventures, with existing investor Pangu Venture. The company plans to use the monies raised to expand its proprietary covalent library to discover small-molecule ligands for numerous biological targets, and to advance its existing oncology programs.
The company’s chemoproteomic technology platform, IMTAC (Isobaric Mass Tagged Affinity Characterization), allows them to better identify small-molecule hits’ cellular targets that are responsible for phenotypic modulation, in other words, identify the locations on formerly undruggable targets that might be drug targets.
“This financing, combined with our recently announced collaboration with Takeda, affirms the strong support among investors and pharmaceutical developers for our proprietary drug discovery and development platform and experienced management team,” said Ping Cao, co-founder, and chief executive officer of BridGene Biosciences. “Over the last few years, we have pursued pioneering work in covalent small molecules and chemoproteomic screening to identify small molecules for traditional undruggable targets and quickly move from hits to leads.”
