With Big Pharmas heading into 2024 with a renewed interest in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), it’s no surprise that ProfoundBio managed to assemble a who’s who of biotech investors for an oversubscribed series B round.
The likes of Lilly Asia Ventures, RA Capital Management, OrbiMed, Medicxi and LifeSci Venture Partners all featured in the $112 million round, which was led by Ally Bridge Group. As part of the financing, ProfoundBio’s board will be embiggened by Andrew Lam, managing director and head of biotech private equity at Ally Bridge, as well as Eric Dobmeier and Enoch Kariuki.
“We are excited to welcome this premier group of life science investors,” Profound’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer Erin Lavelle said in the Feb. 13 release. “This investment boosts our momentum, especially with three clinical-stage candidates in our portfolio and another poised for clinical trials. It's a pivotal step in achieving significant milestones and delivering key data readouts this year and through 2025.”
Those three clinical-stage ADCs are headed up by Rina-S, which is targeted at folate receptor-alpha (FRα) and is in phase 2 trials for ovarian and endometrial cancers, with pivotal studies in ovarian cancer in the works for later this year.
Eli Lilly, the Asia VC arm of which is a returning investor for today’s funding round, has an interest in FRα courtesy of its acquisition of Mablink Bioscience last fall. That deal saw the Big Pharma get its hands on MBK-103, an ADC designed to deliver a topoisomerase I inhibitor to cells that express FRα.
It’s not the only player in that field, with ImmunoGen receiving accelerated FDA approval for an ADC aimed at the folate receptor in 2022. Bristol Myers Squibb paid Eisai $650 million for its own candidate a year earlier.
Profound, which has operations in both Seattle and Suzhou, China, has two ADCs in phase 1 trials. An initial readout from a study of a CD70-targeted ADC called PRO1160 is due later in 2024, to be followed next year by results from PRO1107, a protein tyrosine kinase 7-targeted therapy. This year may also see a bispecific ADC called PRO1286 enter the clinic, Profound said in today’s release.
ADCs have been behind some of the biggest pharma deals in recent months, including Merck & Co.’s $22 billion partnership with Daiichi Sankyo, Bristol Myers Squibb’s $8.4 billion agreement with SystImmune, AbbVie’s $10 billion acquisition of Immunogen and Johnson & Johnson’s $2 billion Ambrx buy, to name a few.