EpimAb Biotherapeutics announced Wednesday that it has raised $74 million in its Series B funding, extending the streak of private fundraising among Chinese biopharmaceutical firms specialising in anti-cancer drug research.
The Shanghai-based company said the funding was co-led by SDIC Fund, the investment arm of State Development Investment Corporation, and Beijing-based venture capital firm Sherpa Healthcare Partners.
Wednesday’s announcement came slightly more than two years after EpimAb’s Series A funding round in April 2017, through which it raised $25 million from the likes of Oriza Ventures, Decheng Capital and 3E Bioventures.
The three-year-old startup is the latest in a long list of cancer drug developers to raise capital since last year as immuno-oncology becomes one of the hottest therapy areas in the biologics industry.
Some of the larger deals include CStone Pharmaceutical’s $260 million Series C, I-Mab Biopharma’s $220 million Series C and Antengene’s $120 million Series B funding. 3D Medicines, a Chinese precision drug developer, is also in the process of raising $60 million in its Series A fundraising, the company’s chief executive John Gong told FinanceAsia.
EpimAb is developing a proprietary technology known as FIT-Ig, which combines the functions of two parental antibodies into a single molecule. The firm said this drug format provides new options for the treatment of many fatal diseases, including cancer.
Its advanced product candidate EMB01, which is based on the FIT-Ig technology, is currently being investigated in a clinical phase I/II trial in China and in the US. Besides EMB01, EpimAb is also developing multiple programmes to treat various cancers.
“The completion of our Series B financing will allow the company to accelerate transforming into a mid-size company, rapidly growing and advancing a pipeline based on our own discovery efforts,” said EpimAb founder and chief executive Chengbin Wu.
“We are very proud to have grown from foundation on internal innovation to where we are today within less than four years and we greatly appreciate the support we’ve received from our existing and new investors, as well as their beliefs in our technologies that have demonstrated advantages in developing breakthrough biologics therapies.”
Wu said that external collaboration is a core part of EpimAb’s development strategy besides internal research and development. The company is now in strategic partnerships with British biopharmaceutical firm Kymab, as well as China’s Innovent Biologics and Zhejiang Teruisi Biopharmaceutical.
