The financing was led by Hillhouse Capital Management and Quan Capital, and included Bay City Capital, Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), Ping An Ventures, Taiho Ventures LLC, ArrowMark Partners and NS Investment.
All existing investors also participated in this financing, including Canaan Partners, Lilly Asia Ventures, OrbiMed Advisors LLC, Pfizer Inc., Sofinnova Ventures and Alexandria Venture Investments. Additionally, Eli Lilly and Company invested $15 million in this financing in conjunction with the discovery and development partnership announced on November 5, 2018.
In connection with the financing, Michael Yi, M.B.A., (Hillhouse Capital Management) and Stella Xu, Ph.D., (Quan Capital) will join the board of directors.
The proceeds will be primarily used to support clinical development for the company’s two lead drug candidates, including NC318, preclinical development of additional novel immunomedicine drug candidates, and the Company’s activities under its previously announced collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company to discover and develop novel cancer targets with the Company’s proprietary FIND-IO platform.
NextCure president and CEO Michael Richman said: “We are excited to welcome a distinguished group of new investors to NextCure and appreciate the strong support from our existing investors.
“We have made tremendous progress in the past 2.5 years, and look forward to the continued clinical development of NC318 and advancement of our growing portfolio of first-in-class immunomedicines.”
NC318 is a first-in-class immunomedicine against a novel immunomodulatory target found on a restricted set of myeloid cells in the tumor microenvironment and on certain tumor types including lung, ovarian and head and neck cancers.
Preclinical research shows that S15 promotes the survival and differentiation of suppressive myeloid cells and negatively regulates T cell function, allowing cancer growth. In preclinical studies, NC318 blocks the negative effects of S15. NC318 is a first-in-class immunomedicine that has the potential to treat multiple cancer types.
The FIND-IO platform is designed to identify novel cell surface molecular interactions that drive functional immune responses in the tumor microenvironment and other disease sites.
NextCure has developed proprietary approaches to assess immune pathways in primary immune cells and established cell lines from immune lineages, including T cells, NK cells, macrophages, myeloid-derived suppressor cells, dendritic cells, as well as cancer cells.
NextCure is utilizing FIND-IO™ technology to identify targets that impact immune function, addressing the major challenge of supplying next generation immunomedicines for patients that do not respond to current cancer therapies.
Source: Company Press Release