Antiva Biosciences has closed a $53 million series E round, a rare late-stage private financing that’s set to fund the company through crucial future readouts.
The company says the latest financing unveiled Thursday will extend its cash runway more than two years into late 2025, enough to get critical readouts on lead asset ABI-2280. The med is slated for a phase 2 trial in patients with high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and an exploratory study in patients with high-risk HPV infection.
In addition to the financing, current CEO Gail Maderis will shift to chairwoman of the board with Kristine Ball tapped to take over the chief executive role. Ball was most recently CEO of Soteria Biotherapeutics, an immuno-oncology company that launched in 2021 with funding from Roche’s venture arm, among others. Three other biotechs where Ball has been either an executive or board member have been acquired, a tantalizing track record for Antiva.
“The lead program has the potential to be a breakthrough in this therapeutic area which has significant unmet need,” said Ball in an interview with Fierce Biotech. “It's a multibillion-dollar market, and there's no approved competition.”
Nearly all cases of cervical cancer can be attributed to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, according to the World Health Organization, and there’s no approved treatment meant to resolve HPV infection. Merck’s Gardasil is a vaccine that protects against nine high-risk HPV serotypes, but that leaves about five others not included.
Antiva’s lead med ABI-2280 is a rebuilt prodrug of acyclic nucleoside phosphonate designed to be administered topically. Recruitment is ongoing in a phase 1/2 trial for patients with CIN as well as another phase 1 trial in healthy volunteers. Ball expects the company will launch another full phase 2 trial in patients with CIN and an exploratory trial in patients with high-risk HPV before the end of the year.
“These will be multicenter trials conducted globally,” she said. “So we will be kind of hunkered down [and] laser-focused on execution during that time, basically, for the next couple of years.”
Antiva’s financing comes at a time when late private financings are increasingly rare. Vedanta Biosciences' series E announced earlier this week is the only other such round in 2023. In the back half of 2022, there was only one series E. Outgoing CEO Maderis hopes the company is in a better position to enter the public market after completing the planned trials.
“[W]e'll keep our fingers crossed and hope that the public market climate and economic climate are in our favor at that time, which they certainly are not right now,” she said.