Health IT, Pharma, Startups

Patrick Soon-Shiong startup gets $25M in personalized medicine space

NantBioscience – the personalized medicine subsection of the extraordinarily funded Patrick Soon-Shiong-led startup NantWorks – […]

NantBioscience – the personalized medicine subsection of the extraordinarily funded Patrick Soon-Shiong-led startup NantWorks – reported in SEC filings that it’s raised $25 million.

This comes soon after the umbrella company’s announcement of a mega-funding deal – in early October it received $320 million in funding, and $250 million of that is from the Kuwait Investment Authority. GenomeWeb spoke of it:

NantHealth noted that other investors in the firm include Verizon, Celgene, Blackberry, and Blackstone. Celgene, who invested $25 million in the firm a few months ago, also has an ongoing collaboration with NantBioscience, an affiliate of NantHealth.

NantWorks hasn’t much discussed what NantBioscience is up to – just that it’s all about “discovering knowledge at the protein level to develop drugs in pursuit of personalized medicine.”

But NantBioscience partnered with University of Colorado in September, generating an exclusive licensing deal that focuses on the Ral protein – which plays a role across activated signaling pathways in pancreatic, lung, colon and other cancers. The idea here is that blocking these Ral proteins that drive tumor growth and metastasis could be valuable as both research tools and cancer therapeutics. The partnership “furthers our goal to catalyze personalized precision cancer care in our war against cancer,” Soon-Shiong said in a statement.

Since its launch last year NantWorks companies have, to date, raised nearly half a billion dollars. In addition to the NantBioscience filing, a related subsidiary – NantMobile – said it raised $50 million in a regulatory filing. The company veers from NantWorks’ primarily health-related bent – it is developing sophisticated digital advertising technology.

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