Investors continue to flock toward antibody-drug conjugates.
Pheon Therapeutics is the latest to catch the tailwinds of the booming segment of oncology R&D. The London-based startup disclosed a $120 million Series B Tuesday morning from lead investor TCGX.
The round will take Pheon through 2027 and support early clinical testing of three ADCs, CEO Cyrus Mozayeni told Endpoints News. New investors BVF Partners, Lightspeed and Perceptive Advisors also joined in the round, which received support from existing backers Atlas Venture, Brandon Capital, Forbion and Research Corporation Technologies.
Pheon has yet to divulge the target that all three of its lead pipeline assets are directed toward. The CEO said Pheon is not aware of any clinical-stage treatments against the target.
“What we’re not interested in doing, for example, is basically pursuing the next generation of ADC on a target where there’s multiple other companies already pursuing that,” Mozayeni said. The FDA has greenlit about a dozen ADCs since the early 2000s.
The company will enter human testing this year with its first asset, which uses a DAR8 topoisomerase 1 inhibitor linker-payload, to go against an undisclosed target, the biotech said Tuesday. The proceeds will also fund Phase 1 trials of two additional assets against the same target, but by way of different linker-payload technologies, Mozayeni said.
“Ultimately this target could have utility across many important tumor types with high clinical unmet need, so we want to make sure we pursue all the avenues to helping patients,” the CEO said.
The biotech’s $68 million Series A, disclosed in September 2022, could have brought the biotech “through the end of this year easily,” Mozayeni said. But as investor and pharma interest surged in the space, the biotech was able to reel in a nine-figure round to extend that runway for a few more years. The startup has 14 employees.
Pharmaceutical makers have been buying their way into the ADC world, such as last year’s Pfizer-Seagen merger and AbbVie’s move for ImmunoGen. Johnson & Johnson also made a splash in January, and Genmab lined up its first-ever acquisition directed at ProfoundBio.
“Our plan is to go the distance,” Mozayeni said.