Biopharmaceutical company Ona Therapeutics, member of Catalonia.health, has announced the closing of an oversubscribed $86.6 million Series B funding round aimed at advancing the clinical development of its first-in-class antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of cancers resistant to current treatments.
The round was jointly led by two new investors, Columbus Venture Partners and Mérieux Equity Partners, with participation from COFIDES and Korys, along with all existing investors: Alta Life Sciences, Asabys Partners, Bpifrance, CDTI, FundPlus NV and Ysios Capital. Asabys Partners and Ysios Capital, both venture capital firms that are members of Catalonia.health, have thus maintained their support for the company in this new phase of growth.
Funding to advance two clinical programs
The resources will be used to advance the clinical development of the company's lead program, ONA-255, a first-in-class ADC targeting breast cancer, and to progress ONA-389, a second ADC targeting colorectal cancer. Ona Therapeutics retains all worldwide commercial rights to its assets.
Ona Therapeutics Statements
Valerie Vanhooren, co-founder and CEO of Ona Therapeutics, highlighted that the round represents an important step to advance ONA-255 towards clinical proof of concept and progress in the development of ONA-389, and underlined the investor syndicate's confidence in the company's differential science and its potential to address drug resistance.
A proprietary platform for the discovery of therapeutic targets
Ona Therapeutics develops a pipeline of ADCs focused on cancers with high unmet medical need, using a proprietary patient data-driven therapeutic target discovery platform that identifies tumor-specific antigens and epitopes. This funding comes at a key moment for the company, which is entering the clinical development phase and beginning to generate the first safety and efficacy data in humans.
Additions to the board of directors
In relation to this financing, they will join the board of directors of Ona Jose Mesa, partner of Columbus Venture Partners; Valérie Calenda, managing partner at Mérieux Equity Partners, and Eva Van Overmeire, senior investment director at Korys.
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