October 29, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Up-and-coming biotech Aileron Therapeutics, Inc. today announced it has secured $33 million in an extension to its Series E funding round from AJU IB Investment Co., Ltd. and two undisclosed private investment groups, bringing the round’s total investment to $48 million.
It also included participation from all Aileron’s existing investors including Apple Tree Partners, Excel Venture Management, Lilly Ventures, Novartis Venture Funds, Roche Venture Fund and SR One.
The Cambridge, Mass-based clinical stage biopharmaceutical company is focusing primarily on advancing its tumor suppressing drug ALRN-6924 into clinical trials. ALRN-6924 works by activating tumor suppression protein p53, and is touted as the first clinical drug candidate that targets both the MDM2 and the MDMX suppressor proteins of p53.
Aileron said it will use the money to move quickly to rollout ALRN-6924, which has attracted quite a bit of attention from the clinical oncology space thus far. ALRN-6924 is planned for entry into Phase 1 clinical testing in 2014 in both liquid and solid tumor patients.
“This financing enables Aileron to rapidly move forward the clinical development of ALRN-6924 as well as ongoing translational research. P53 is one of the most exciting and valuable oncology targets given its potential to impact a very broad range of cancers and patients,” said Joseph Yanchik, president and chief executive officer of Aileron, in a statement.
The company said P53 is well known as “the guardian of the genome” because it can repair damaged DNA or trigger cell death, is known to be inactivated in virtually all human cancers. The p53 protein is exciting to researchers because when combined with a stapled peptide, like ALRN-6924, it can be reactivated to inhibit tumor growth.
“We are very pleased with Aileron’s progress and look forward to advancing the first Stapled Peptide drug for oncology into the clinic,” said Scott Kapnick, chairman of Aileron’s board of directors. “We are grateful to have the full and continued participation of our existing investors. The high quality of the new investment groups that participated in this financing reflects the importance of this research to cancer treatment.”
