US-based immunotherapy developer Asher Biotherapeutics closed a $108m series B round featuring Alexandria Venture Investments, the venture capital arm of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities, yesterday.
The round also included Wellington Management Company, RA Capital Management, Marshall Wace, Logos Capital, Invus, Janus Henderson Investors, Boxer Capital, Mission BioCapital, Third Rock Ventures and undisclosed institutional investors.
Founded in 2019, Asher Bio focuses on developing targeted immunotherapy treatments for cancer, autoimmune and infectious diseases, selectively activating certain immune cells through its cis-targeting platform.
The funding will support its therapy development works, particularly its lead asset AB248, a cancer immunotherapy, advancing it through proof-of-concept towards an investigational new drug application in the third quarter of 2022.
Asher Bio raised $55m in a Third Rock Ventures-led series A in March 2021, which saw participation from incubator operator Y Combinator, Boxer Capital, Invus and MBC Biolabs.
Craig Gibbs, chief executive of Asher Bio, said: “We are pleased to announce this series B financing and we are tremendously grateful to our new and existing investors for their support and commitment to our goal of delivering a new class of biotherapeutics, with superior selectivity and broad applicability across multiple tumour types, as well as infectious and autoimmune diseases.
“Since our founding, we have made significant progress validating the modularity and broad applicability of our cis-targeting platform, achieving preclinical proof-of-concept for our first three pipeline programs and building our team into a sustainable organization, with the depth and capabilities to exploit the full potential of our novel immunotherapies.”
