Singapore-based clinical-stage biotech company Hummingbird Bioscience has announced the close of its US$125 million Series C financing round, led by Novo Holdings.
The round also saw participation from new investors including Frazier Healthcare Partners, Octagon Capital, EDBI, AMGEN Ventures, DROIA Ventures, Morningside Ventures, Pureos Bioventures, Polaris Partners, Affinity Asset Advisors, Ally Bridge Group and Altrium Capital Management.
Existing investors including SK Inc, Heritas Capital, and Mirae Asset Venture Capital also joined the round.
The company will use the funds to advance the clinical development of its assets including HMBD-001, a HER3 antibody for NRG1-fusion and HER3-driven tumours, and HMBD-002, an anti-VISTA neutralising antibody for advanced solid tumours.
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The funds will also be used to expand the capabilities of Hummingbird’s proprietary Rational Antibody Discovery platform (RAD) and progress the development of its next-generation pipeline of precision therapeutics, including HMBD-009, a BCMA-TACI dual-specific T cell engager.
“These new funds give us further resources to invest in our early-stage pipeline, as well as supporting the clinical development of our two lead programmes that we believe can deliver very meaningful benefit for patients,” said co-founder and CEO Piers Ingram.
“We believe that Hummingbird’s novel data-driven, systems biology approach brings new precision to the field of antibody drug discovery and development,” said Kenneth Harrison, Partner at Novo Ventures.
“There is significant potential for novel antibody-based therapeutics and through Hummingbird’s RAD platform, we can now discover high value antibodies for challenging targets. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Hummingbird to solve complex challenges in antibody development, and deliver highly differentiated therapies to patients in need,” Kiel Kim said
Hummingbird Bioscience is focused on developing precision therapies against hard-to-drug targets to improve treatment outcomes. It harnesses the latest advances in systems biology and data science to better understand and solve the underlying causes of disease and guide development of our therapeutics.
Enabled by its RAD platform, it discovers and engineers precision therapies against optimal yet elusive epitopes that have not been successfully drugged, unlocking novel mechanisms of action.
In May 2020, Hummingbird closed its extended Series B round at US$25 million.
Harrison, along with Dan Estes (General Partner at Frazier Healthcare Partners) and Kiel Kim (VP, SK Inc.) will join Hummingbird’s board of directors.
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Image Credit: Hummingbird Bioscience
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