Agomab raises $100m for Crohn’s drug, and other financings

Agomab Therapeutics has closed a $100 million third-round financing, heading a list of recent funding rounds that also features AstronauTx, MinervaX, Precede Bio and LimmaTech.

Belgium-based Agomab will use some of the proceeds to fund a recently-started phase 2 trial of its lead ALK5 inhibitor AGMB-129 for fibrostenosing Crohn’s disease, a severe form that often requires endoscopic treatments or surgery, as well as a following pipeline of fibrosis-targeted programmes including a candidate for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in late preclinical development.

The Series C was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation from new investors EQT Life Sciences, Canaan, and Dawn Biopharma, a platform controlled by KKR, as well as existing investors.

AstronauTx of the UK cleared £48 million (around $61 million) in a Series A led by Novartis Venture Fund with support from Bristol Myers Squibb, Brandon Capital, EQT Life, MPM Capital, and the Dementia Discovery Fund to support the development of novel treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

The company was launched in 2019 as a spinout from University College London and is working with UCL scientists on small-molecule medicines that reset the behaviour of astrocytes, crucial support cells in the brain that in diseases like Alzheimer’s can become harmful.

Denmark’s MinervaX has completed an upsized €54 million ($57 million) financing that will be used to fund phase 3 development of its novel group B streptococcus (GBS) preventative vaccine, currently in a pair of phase 2 trials, in pregnant women. GBS is a major cause of life-threatening infections in newborns, as well as adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm delivery and stillbirths.

The round featured new investors EQT Life Sciences and OrbiMed, with participation from existing investors Novo Holdings, Pureos Ventures, Sanofi Ventures, Trill Impact Ventures, Adjuvant Capital, Wellington Partners, Industrifonden, Sunstone LifeScience Ventures, and LF Invest.

Boston-based Precede Biosciences has come out of stealth mode with a $57 million Series A to help develop its liquid biopsy platform, designed to monitor DNA that can be found in as little as 1ml of plasma, in order to tease out molecular mechanisms involved in diseases and eventually diagnose disease and match patients to drug treatments.

The spinout from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute says the technology is a first for the field as it enables comprehensive profiling of dynamic disease-site biology at the gene and pathway level from a simple blood draw. Seed and first-round funding came from 5AM Ventures, Binney Street Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, Illumina Ventures, Bristol Myers Squibb, Osage University Partners, and Qatar Investment Authority.

Finally, Swiss biotech LimmaTech Biologics cleared $37 million in a Series A that will go towards advancing its pipeline of vaccines against multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections, headed by candidates for shigellosis and gonorrhoea. The company expects to announce preliminary results of a phase 2 trial of its GSK-partnered Shigella shot in the second half of 2023.

The financing round was co-led by Adjuvant Capital, AXA IM Alts, and the Novo Holdings REPAIR Impact Fund.