An Indiana University spinout attracted investors from Johnson & Johnson Development Corp. and BioCrossroads with novel drugs to treat, and even potentially cure, patients with hepatitis B. Assembly Pharmaceuticals received an undisclosed amount for this seed round.
This funding will finance the preclinical proof of concept and help the company establish its bio labs in San Francisco, plus broaden the research collaboration in Indiana, according to a company statement. Currently, the company has offices and labs at Janssen Labs at QB3 in San Francisco.
Twilight Ventures also contributed to the round. According to CEO Derek Small’s LinkedIn profile, he is president of Luson Bioventures, which contributed to this round. The BioCrossroads funding came from the Indiana Seed Fund II.
According to a company statement, the drug would rely on “multiple families of small molecules known as Core Protein Allosteric Modulators (CpAMs), which target the HBV core protein.” IU professor and Assembly co-founder Dr. Adam Zlotnick discovered CpAMs, and the company continues to maintain university ties.
The 2-year old startup’s leadership has links to Roche Pharmaceuticals (co-founder Uri Lopatin led the Hep-B program there) and Eli Lilly (co-founder and IU professor Richard DiMarchi was a Group VP there) as well. Small led Naurex and Coferon as CEO.
According to the Hepatitis B Foundation, as many as 400 million people are chronically infected with the disease.
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