A brand new biotech company promising to deliver bio-superior therapeutics for several disease targets has caught the attention of investors, pulling in $9 million in its first investment round.
Zebra Biologics disclosed in a SEC filing this week that it’s raised $9 million from four investors.
The little information available on Zebra, which was formed this summer, indicates that it’s using technology developed by Dr. Richard Lerner at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego to discover and develop bio-superior antibody therapeutics and complex drug targets.
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According to OPKO Health (NYSE:OPK), which said last month it was making an undisclosed strategic investment in the company, Zebra’s platform is an advanced version of a core technology that was crucial to the discovery of AbbVie’s Humira, which saw $9.3 billion in worldwide sales last year. Its technology “allows for the selection of antibodies for function rather than through simple binding,” OPKO says.
Zebra has a pre-clinical pipeline of candidate antibodies with potential in regulating diabetes and obesity, cancer, and treatment of neurological disease. The company plans to enter R&D collaborations with pharma and biotech companies to bring a portfolio of bio-superiors into clinical development in the next five years.
Based in Concord, Mass., the company is led by Ronald Lindsay, an executive vice president at life science company Sequenom Inc. Lindsay did not respond to an email inquiry for more information on the company’s progress and programs.
Over the past few years, biobetters have attracted the interest of Big Pharma companies including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, which bought MedImmune, which focuses on bio-superiors, for $15 billion in 2007.
