Singapore-based cancer treatment developer Hummingbird Bioscience has collected $19m of series B funding from investors including GNTech Venture Capital, the corporate venturing arm of alcoholic beverage producer Kooksoondang Brewery.
The round featured Kiwoom Investment-Shinhan Capital, an alliance between investment bank Kiwoom Securities and financial and leasing services firm Shinhan Capital, and Mirae Asset Venture Investment, the VC arm of financial services firm Mirae Asset Capital, which also invested directly itself.
The Singaporean-state owned Seeds Capital, Delian Capital, DAValue-GiltEdge, HB Investment and Wooshin Venture Investment rounded off the participants.
Founded in 2014, Hummingbird is working on therapeutic antibodies that have been engineered to hit specific disease targets. Its two lead assets, HMBD-001 and HMBD-002, both target subtypes of cancer and are scheduled to enter clinical trials in 2020.
The capital infusion will fuel the expansion of the company’s pipeline, as it looks to uncover new disease targets and advance drug discovery under an alliance it has struck with pharmaceutical firm Amgen.
Piers Ingram, Hummingbird’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “With our world-class team of cancer systems biology experts, multiple -omics and data science technologies, Hummingbird Bioscience is at the cutting-edge of scientific discovery.
“The support from our strategic investors is a strong endorsement of our translational science and transformative vision for the future of drug development.”
Hummingbird had previously raised an undisclosed amount in a series A round that closed in July this year, after Heritas Capital added to earlier funding supplied by Seeds Capital, Decheng Capital and unnamed existing investors in May 2017.