A company developing monoclonal antibodies for autoimmune diseases and cancers has raised a new round of financing, much of it from Asian firms.
Harbour BioMed said Monday that it raised $85 million in a Series B funding round, led by Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC Private Limited, with participation from new investors including China Life Private Equity Investment Company and Vertex Ventures, along with existing investors AdvanTech and Legend Capital. Harbour has its business operations and laboratories in Boston, along with operations and a research and development site in Shanghai and an antibody platform innovation center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, according to its website.
The company previously raised a Series A funding round worth $50 million with its founding in 2016 and acquisition of Netherlands-based Harbour Antibodies, along with an A+ financing round from AdvanTech and CDH to support in-licensed clinical programs in greater China.
The company said Aug. 20 that it had made a deal with Sichuan Kelun-Biotech Biopharmaceutical for A167, a PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor in Phase II development, to develop and commercialize the drug in worldwide markets outside Greater China, a term that refers to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and the self-governing island of Taiwan. However, it did not specify which markets the companies would target. The ClinicalTrials.gov database lists a study of 104 patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma that was posted in July but is not yet recruiting patients and does not have any sites listed. Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo (nivolumab) and Merck & Co.’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) are PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors both approved for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Harbour’s other programs include a CD3-based bispecific antibody that it is testing in HER2-overexpressed cancers in Greater China. That drug, GBR 1302, is being developed under a partnership with Mumbai-based Glenmark Pharmaceuticals that the companies announced on Aug. 7. The company is also developing an anti-FcRn antibody against autoimmune diseases such as myasthenia gravis and neuromyelitis optica, also in Greater China.
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