Taiho Ventures invests in Arcus Biosciences

Arcus raised an additional $70m in equity capital from Taiho Ventures, GV, Invus, DROIA Oncology Ventures and Stanford University, together with its Series A investors, including The Column Group, Foresite Capital, Novartis and Celgene.

This funding allows Arcus to continue its rapid drug development activities for the company's small molecule and antibody immuno-oncology approaches with the goal of building its own internal combinations.

Taiho Pharmaceutical executive director, board member and global chief corporate officer and Taiho Ventures investment committee member Nobuyuki Hashimoto said: “Taiho Ventures is pleased to support the Arcus team and its promising drug pipeline programs.

"Terry Rosen, Chief Executive Officer, and Juan Jaen, President, are among the leaders in the oncology drug discovery field with over 20 years of experience, and have built an innovative immuno-oncology program at Flexus, leading to the significant acquisition transaction with Bristol-Myers Squibb in a short period of time.

Dr. Rosen said: “Together, they have many years of industry experience as successful entrepreneurs and are invaluable as they take Arcus to the next level with this significant round of financing.

"The addition of Taiho Ventures to this round of investment will augment the financial and business resources available to Arcus to help build a successful company in the immuno-oncology space, in particular, looking at the Japan and Asian market.

"They have significant experience in the industry and will provide guidance in the company's Japan/Asian strategic direction."

Arcus Biosciences is an innovative immuno-oncology company that is developing both small molecules and antibodies, enabling the combinations of agents from internal programs.

The company has selected its first three targets for small molecules along the ATP-adenosine pathway; CD73, CD39 and the A2A receptor and set the goals to take some of those programs into the clinic in 2017.