Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Rome Therapeutics, which today revealed a series B financing extension of $72 million that includes Big Pharma pillars Johnson & Johnson and Bristol Myers Squibb.
The oversubscribed extension round includes Eurofarma Ventures, Luma Group, Mirae Asset Capital and others, with J&J Innovation – JJDC and BMS as new investors. Returning investors also included Arch Ventures, Sanofi Ventures and Casdin Capital.
Rome revealed the original series B of $77 million in September 2021, which means the round is now $149 million. At that time, the biotech was still preclinical with a focus on autoimmune disorders. Now, the company will put the fresh cash toward advancing a LINE-1 reverse transcriptase inhibitor into early clinical trials. That includes a phase 1 dose-finding study and other tests to show proof of mechanism.
LINE-1 RT is a viral-like protein that occurs in diseased cells but not healthy ones. Rome wants to block the pathway and therefore inflammation without compromising infection response.
The initial focus for the LINE-1 inhibitor is lupus, but Rome plans to expand into other autoimmune conditions later.
The fundraising will help Rome advance its proprietary data science platform that identifies functionally active repeat elements to determine their role in disease. The company has other programs coming off the platform in autoimmune disease, cancer and neurodegeneration. Moreover, the platform is helping Rome build out its clinical trials by providing insights on patient selection.