Ambit Biosciences, a US-based anti-cancer drugs developer formerly known as Aventa Biosciences, has raised $50m in its series E round from a consortium including Switzerland-based Roche’s and Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca’s corporate venturing units.
Alongside Roche Venture Fund and MedImmune Ventures in the round, which already has the first half drawn down, were venture capital firms OrbiMed Advisors, Aisling Capital, Apposite Healthcare, GrowthWorks, Forward Ventures, GIMV and Radius Ventures.
It has now raised nearly $165m in private funding to advance its lead drug candidate, Quizartinib.
Michael Martino, executive president of Ambit, said: “We have received the data from our large, 333 patient phase 2 trial of Quizartinib in patients with relapsed/refractory AML [acute myeloid leukemia]. We’ve refocused and prioritized our work on earlier stage pipeline assets, including our oral JAK2 and CSF1R inhibitor programs, and re-energized the team.”
Ambit last year withdrew an $86.25m registration for its US flotation in favour of extending its series D round by $30m.
Venture capital firm Apposite Capital led the D-2 round in June 2011, which included peers Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund, OrbiMed Advisors, Forward Ventures, GIMV, GrowthWorks, Radius Ventures, Horizon Technology Finance and NovaQuest (which spun off from drugs group Quintiles in November) and corporate venturing backing firm Genechem, Roche Venture Fund and MedImmune Ventures.
In October 2010, Ambit raised $15m of a planned $15.9m round of debt, rights and securities from 18 investors, according to a recent regulatory filing first seen by news provider Xconomy.
Ambit originally raised $49.3m in its series D round in 2007, led again by Apposite Capital and including corporate venturing from MedImmune Ventures, which is now part of AstraZeneca; NovaQuest; Roche Venture Fund; and Genechem. The other VCs in the D round were OrbiMed Advisors, Radius Ventures, Horizon Technology Finance, Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund, Forward Ventures, Avalon Ventures, GIMV and Jov-CMDF.
In May 2005, Ambit made the final close of its series C round at $31m led by Roche Venture Fund, while the first two rounds raised an aggregate $20.8m in 2000.