Pharmaceutical firm Novo Holdings has led a $125m series C round for Singapore-based precision therapy developer Hummingbird Bioscience that featured pharmaceutical firm Amgen and diversified conglomerate SK Group.
The round also included EDBI, Frazier Healthcare Partners, Octagon Capital, Droia Ventures, Morningside Ventures, Pureos Bioventures, Polaris Partners, Affinity Asset Advisors, Ally Bridge and Altrium Capital Management.
Heritas Capital Management and Mirae Asset Venture Investments, a subsidiary of investment management firm Mirae Asset Global Investments, filled out the round, in which Amgen participated through its Amgen Ventures unit.
Hummingbird is developing precision therapies that use engineered antibodies to treat multiple types of cancer as well as other diseases including lupus. Its lead candidates HMBD-001 and HMBD-002, are being developed to address tumours.
Hummingbird will use the capital injection to advance the development of both assets, to enhance its antibody discovery platform and to build out its pipeline of precision therapeutics.
Kenneth Harrison, partner at Novo’s corporate venture capital vehicle, Novo Ventures, has joined Hummingbird’s board of directors alongside Kiel Kim, vice-president at SK Group and Dan Estes, general partner of Frazier Healthcare.
The business has received at least $150m of funding since it was founded in 2014.
Hummingbird’s increased its series B funding to $25m in May 2020 following a $6m second tranche led by SK Group and featuring business promotion board Enterprise Singapore’s Seeds Capital subsidiary and Heritas.
The company picked up $19m for the initial close of the series B round in December 2019, which was co-led by alcoholic beverage producer Kooksoondang Brewery’s GNTech Venture Capital unit and Mirae Asset Venture Investment.
Kiwoom Investment-Shinhan Capital, which represents Mirae Asset affiliate Mirae Asset Capital, investment bank Kiwoom Securities and financial and leasing services provider Shinhan Capital, also took part in the first tranche, as did Seeds Capital, Delian Capital, DAValue-GiltEdge, HB Investment and Wooshin Venture Investment.
Hummingbird closed a series A round of undisclosed size in July 2019 that was co-led by Heritas and Seeds Capital after earlier investments from Heritas, Seeds Capital and Decheng Capital.