24 August 2018 - - US-based drug developer ApoGen Biotechnologies, Inc has expanded its Series A financing to a total of USD 11m, the company said.
M Ventures, the strategic, corporate venture arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and existing investors provided an additional USD 4m in the company's Series A.
Concurrent with the financing, Keno Gutierrez, PhD, MBA, an Investment Director at M Ventures, has joined the Board of Directors of ApoGen.
In December of 2016, Accelerator Life Science Partners (Accelerator) announced a USD 7m Series A investment in ApoGen, with AbbVie Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Johnson and Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., Watson Fund, L.P., WRF Capital and WuXi AppTec's Corporate Venture Fund participating in the financing.
ApoGen is initially focusing its drug development efforts on an antiviral component of the human innate immune system, the Apobec cytidine deaminases, which have been implicated as a prominent source of mutations in cancers.
Mutations induced by Apobec enzymes occur throughout the cancer genome, and ApoGen is targeting this process as a mechanism for inhibiting the development of resistance to cancer therapies.
The company intends to use the funding from the expanded Series A to hire additional staff and establish a laboratory in Seattle. This growth reflects and is consistent with ApoGen's progress in its discovery and development activities around its APOBEC technology platform.
ApoGen also named Stephen Gwaltney, PhD, as vice president, chemistry and Peter de Vries, PhD, as senior director of biology. Dr. Gwaltney has extensive expertise in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery/development.
Prior to joining ApoGen, he was a founder of Chrysalis Therapeutics. His previous experience includes serving as vice president, chemistry at Global Blood Therapeutics; director of chemistry at Takeda San Diego; and project leader for the DPP4 program at Syrrx, which resulted in the discovery of alogliptin, a drug now marketed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
He is an author on more than 75 publications and patents, was on the board of the San Diego Section of the American Chemical Society and served on the San Diego Research Committee of the American Diabetes Association.
Dr. de Vries was most recently strategic director at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and has more than 25 years of experience in discovery research and drug and business development in the biopharmaceutical industry.
His previous experience includes serving as director cancer biology and pharmacology at Cascadian Therapeutics; senior commercialisation officer, vaccine development global program at PATH; and associate director biology at Acylin Therapeutics.
He was instrumental in two successful IND applications for small molecule cancer drugs. He is an author on more than 40 publications and a co-inventor of one patent. He was also principal and founder of Broadview Biotech Consulting and served as a new ventures mentor at the University of Washington Center for Commercialization.
ApoGen Biotechnologies, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on the development of a new class of therapeutics targeting drivers of cancer genomic mutations.
The company is building upon technologies developed at the University of Minnesota to develop drugs that block a key pathway that causes drug resistance.
ApoGen's drug discovery and development efforts are directed toward highly selective and potent small molecule inhibitors of the APOBEC family of enzymes, which are DNA cytosine deaminases and an important endogenous source of DNA mutations in cancer. For more information, visit www.apogenbiotech.com.
Accelerator Life Science Partners catalyzes the development and commercialization of breakthrough biotechnology innovations.
Accelerator is a partner that provides the complete business, scientific and financial toolkit necessary for successfully establishing and operating an early-stage biotechnology company.
M Ventures is the strategic, corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.