A company focused on cancers and advanced fatty liver disease has completed its latest round of venture capital financing.
Terns Pharmaceuticals said Tuesday that it had closed an $80 million Series B funding round, led by Vivo Capital and OrbiMed, with participation from Decheng Capital, along with Series A investor Lilly Asia Ventures.
The company – which is based in San Mateo, California, and Shanghai – said it plans to use the money to develop its two lead drug candidates, TERN-101 and TERN-201, which it expects to enter into the clinic in the first half of next year. Both drugs – respectively an FXR agonist and an SSAO inhibitor, according to the company’s pipeline page – are under development for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, an advanced firm of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease that is on the rise globally due to growing prevalence of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. The page also lists three additional, undisclosed targets for NASH and undisclosed targets for three oncology indications, namely liver cancer, gastrointestinal cancer and chronic myeloid leukemia.
“Since we launched the company a short time ago, we have been working diligently to advance our key programs and continue executing on our strategy to bring innovative therapeutics to underserved patients globally, and with this financing we are well-positioned to continue to execute on that mission,” Terns CEO Weidong Zhong said in a statement.
NASH is a growing topic of interest for drugmakers. On Monday, two of the world’s largest firms – Switzerland’s Novartis and New York-based Pfizer – announced a partnership to conduct clinical trials combining their respective investigational NASH drugs. And last week saw the launch of a new Israeli-American company, 89Bio, by OrbiMed, which led a $60 million Series A round to fund it. A report from August forecast that the market for NASH – which currently has no approved drugs – will grow from last year’s $1.17 billion to $21.47 billion in 2025.
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