VCs gamble $96M on rare disease drug, biosimilar play and new drug for AMD

Making up for an anemic first quarter, a group of VCs operating on both sides of the Atlantic has triggered a string of new rounds totaling $96 million to back three biotech upstarts.

The rare-disease biotech Wilson Therapeutics in Stockholm led the flurry of new rounds today with a $40 million investment from Abingworth, MVM Life Science Partners founding investor HealthCap. The biotech has its sights set on a new treatment for Wilson's disease--rare cases involving patients who have lost their ability to flush copper out of their system, causing severe health problems.

The biotech is developing WTX101, which has orphan drug status in the U.S. and the E.U.

Epirus Biopharmaceuticals in Boston--which simultaneously executed a reverse merger with Zalicus ($ZLCS) to gain a listing on Nasdaq--raised $36 million for its biosimilars work, with a lead Phase III program for a Remicade knockoff along with follow-up programs for Humira and Avastin. Livzon Mabpharm led the round with contributions coming from Adage Capital, Greenwoods Investment, Gibralt US, Inc., Monashee Capital Partners LP, and an investment affiliate of Mousse Partners, as well as existing investors TPG Biotech, Montreux Equity Partners and 5AM Ventures.

Epirus is led by Kythera co-founder Amit Munshi, who has come up with a new strategy for biosimilar development work. Rather than focus primarily on the U.S. and Europe, two huge markets attracting the attention of multinational players, he's zeroed in on emerging markets like South Africa and Brazil. By partnering with manufacturers already on the ground, he told  FierceBiotech in a recent interview, the company can improve its chances of pushing ahead with local regulators while gaining government support to build facilities and winning government contracts for lower-priced therapies

In South San Francisco, Iconic Therapeutics raised $20 million from MPM Capital, Lundbeckfond Ventures and H.I.G. BioVentures to back a program for hl-con1, a chimeric protein therapeutic for age-related macular degeneration that was licensed from Yale. The drug is an immunotherapy that targets blood vessels associated with wet AMD while reducing levels of VEGF.

- here's the release on Wilson Therapeutics
- here's the story on Epirus
- here's the release on Iconic