Novartis-backed ImaginAb banks $21M for antibody tech

UCLA brainchild ImaginAb has hauled in another $21 million in venture cash to advance its antibody-re-engineering technology, a biotech approach to imaging that the company believes will help personalize treatments for cancer and immune disease.

Mérieux Développement, the investment arm of French life sciences outfit bioMérieux, led the latest round, joined by repeat investors Novartis ($NVS), Cycad Group and Nextech Invest. Each is betting ImaginAb's novel take on imaging agents will help investigators better understand disease and match patients to their ideal therapies.

The big idea at the Los Angeles biotech is engineering antibodies into smaller protein fragments that ferret out their targets and light up on PET scans, helping physicians visualize disease on a molecular level, the company said. That comes in handy in choosing patients for clinical trials, the company said, but the technology's broader promise lies in illuminating the role of immune function and response and possibly spotlighting new targets, Mérieux Partner Valérie Calenda said.

"ImaginAb's prostate cancer imaging program has demonstrated impressive clinical data," Calenda said in a statement. "... The sensitivity and specificity of an antibody fragment approach also has the potential to change the way we understand occult disease, for example the non-metastatic, or 'M0,' patient population in castrate-resistant prostate cancer."

The technology's potential was enough to sway Novartis, which led ImaginAb's ​$12.5 million A round in 2012, and the startup said it's working through about 30 collaborations with global pharma outfits in cancer and immune, inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease.

With its latest cash, ImaginAb is planning to expand its pipeline of in vivo imaging agents, CEO Christian Behrenbruch said, augmenting its programs in prostate, pancreatic and ovarian cancers.

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