US-based regenerative antibodies developer Surrozen has picked up $50m in a series C round featuring Hartford Healthcare Trust, a subsidiary of health system Hartford Healthcare.
Venture capital firms Column Group and Horizons Ventures also took part in the round, as did four new investors, of which only family office Euclidian Capital was identified.
Spun out of Stanford University in 2016, Surrozen is developing regenerative antibodies that repair tissues and organs damaged through serious illnesses, such as severe liver, lung, airway and inflammatory bowel diseases, hearing loss, neurological disorders or retinopathies.
The company’s approach exploits the body’s repair mechanisms by targeting the Wnt pathway, a key factor in organism development, stem-cell maintenance and tissue regeneration.
The series C funding will help Surrozen move two drug candidates toward investigational new drug applications in 2021 and 2022, and then into clinical development. The potential therapies target severe liver disease and moderate to severe inflammatory bowel disease respectively.
Surrozen completed a $50m series B round in March 2019 backed by Hartford Healthcare Endowment, the health system’s philanthropic arm, as well as Horizons Ventures, NS Investment, Column Group and unnamed investors that may have included biotech producer Immunogen. It followed a $33m series A led by Column Group in 2017.
