Adcendo raises $135m for cancer ADCs, and other financings

Adcendo has tapped into the strong investor appetite for companies developing antibody-drug conjugates for cancer with an oversubscribed second round that raised $135 million.

The Copenhagen, Denmark-based biotech said it will use the funds to advance multiple ADCs into the clinic, focusing on cancers with "high unmet medical need."

At the front of its pipeline is ADCE-T02, a "highly differentiated" anti-tissue factor (TF) ADC that Adcendo licensed from Chinese biotech Multitude Therapeutics in the summer, in a deal with a top-line value above $1 billion. There is already an anti-TF ADC on the market in the US, Pfizer and Genmab's Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin), which has been approved by the FDA since 2021 as a treatment for cervical cancer.

The new cash will also go towards a clinical trial of ADCE-D01, a uPARAP-directed ADC that was recently cleared for a phase 1/2 trial by the FDA and will be developed as a monotherapy for patients with metastatic and/or unresectable soft tissue sarcoma, and two other programmes against undisclosed targets.

The financing was led by TCGX and included TPG, Orbimed Advisors, Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Surveyor Capital, and Logos Capital, as new investors, with all of Adcendo's existing backers also chipping in.

Meanwhile, in other recent biotech financing news, Enveda raised $130 million in a Series C round that will allow it to advance more of its artificial intelligence-discovered drug candidates into clinical development in 2025 and 2026.

The Boulder, Colorado-based start-up applies AI to the discovery of drugs from living organisms and has developed a library of compounds that it thinks have never been explored by science. Its current pipeline focuses on drugs in the immunology and inflammation, obesity, fibrosis, and neurosensory disease categories.

The round was led by Kinnevik and FPV, with other new and existing investors, such as Dimension Capital, Lux Capital, and The Nature Conservancy, also taking part

Another AI specialist, Netherlands start-up Cradle Bio, raised $73 million in Series B funding led by IVP for its protein engineering platform, which uses generative AI (GenAI) models to speed the discovery and development of proteins with applications across the pharma, food, and chemical sectors.

The Amsterdam company reckons its approach can overcome major limitations of current protein engineering techniques, which it calls "time-intensive, costly, and error-prone [and] like searching for a needle in a haystack." It claims to be able to speed up projects by up to 12 times with cost reductions that can be as much as 90%. It is already working with Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, and Grifols on projects.

The new round, which was also supported by previous investors Index Ventures and Kindred Capital, takes the total raised by Cradle Bio to date above $100 million.

Belgian biotech ATB Therapeutics has completed a €54 million ($57 million) first round, co-led by EQT Life Sciences and MRL Ventures Fund, to support the further development of its ATBioFarm platform, which can generate 'weaponised' antibody-based therapeutics with multiple targeting and killing domains.

The cash injection will help the company expand its R&D operations to a new facility in Ghent that will operate alongside its current unit in Marche-en-Famenne, where it is setting up a pilot manufacturing plant.

V-Bio Ventures, VIVES Partners, the Belgian sovereign fund SFPIM, Wallonie Entreprendre, Sambrinvest, and existing investors participated in the Series A.

Finally, Canada's 35Pharma has closed an oversubscribed $53 million Series C financing that will be used to advance a pipeline of activin and GDF inhibitors headed by HS135 for pulmonary hypertension and HS235 for cardiometabolic disease and obesity.

The financing was led by Frazier Life Sciences, with participation from additional new investors that included Vivo Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Deep Track Capital, Paradigm BioCapital Advisors, Columbia Threadneedle, as well as from existing investors VenBio, Surveyor Capital, Logos Capital, and Marshall Wace.

35Pharma has been cleared to start phase 1 clinical testing of HS235 in overweight and obese healthy subjects by Health Canada, with data due in the second half of 2025.