Participants in the round, which was led by RiverVest Venture Partners, included new investors Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Redmile Group, and existing investors Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, HT Family Office, Canaan Partners, Helsinn Investment Fund and William Marsh Rice University.
The proceeds will be used to advance the company’s five drug candidates into preclinical and clinical development.
All drug candidates were derived from OncoResponse’s discovery platform, which mines the immune systems of patients who have responded exceptionally well to cancer immunotherapies.
OncoResponse CEO Clifford Stocks said: “We are very pleased to add RiverVest, QIA and Redmile to our already strong syndicate of investors as we transition our company’s efforts from identifying drug candidates to developing them for patients.
“We now have several antibodies from our cancer patient-derived platform that are directed at modulating immunosuppression of the tumor microenvironment. This new capital will allow us to advance our programs through pre-clinical development and enable us to move our lead programs into clinical studies.”
RiverVest Venture Partners managing director Dr John McKearn said: “Since its inception in October 2015, OncoResponse has done an excellent job leveraging its platform to rapidly screen and discover therapeutically relevant antibodies from patients with elite response to immunotherapy.
“We believe that their portfolio of unique drug candidates has the potential to help cancer patients, expanding the promise of immunotherapy.”
OncoResponse discovers and develops highly targeted and immuno-oncology therapeutic antibodies against novel cancer targets.
The OncoResponse discovery engine is working to increase the success rate of cancer immunotherapies by identifying novel antibody drug candidates across multiple cancer types from the immune systems of patients who have responded exceptionally well to cancer immunotherapies.
Source: Company Press Release