Amunix nets $73M in Series A financing round

Amunix Pharmaceuticals, a tumor cancer-focused biopharmaceutical company has completed $73 million Series A financing round.

Amunix said the financing was lead by Boston-based Omega Funds, with existing investor Frazier Healthcare Partners and new investors Longitude Capital, Redmile Group, Polaris Partners, Casdin Capital, Two River, Venrock, and Delian Capital.  

Amunix said it plans to use cash, along with the $40 million upfront payment from a Roche licensing deal from January 2020, to move forward with developing its lead candidate, AMX-818, an XPAT T cell engager targeting HER2+ solid tumors into the clinic, to progress earlier discovery stage XPAT programs and to initiate XPAC discovery work.

Also, the company plans to move to South San Francisco later this year to better take advantage of the talent pool, as it said.

New boards of directors

As part of the Series A financing, Otello Stampacchia, Ph.D., Managing Director and Founder of Omega Funds; David Hirsch, M.D., Ph.D., Managing Director and Founder of Longitude Capital; and James Brush, M.D., Partner at Frazier Healthcare Partners, will join Amunix’s Board of Directors.

Dr. Angie You, Chief Executive Officer at Amunix said the milestone event of getting this investment affords the company a significant financial runway to advance its novel pipeline of T cell engagers and cytokines targeting a spectrum of solid tumors.

“Biologic immune activators hold tremendous untapped promise to help many cancer patients achieve better outcomes. We are focused on making this promise a reality by leveraging our clinically validated prodrug platform to deliver T cell engager and cytokine therapies that combine potency with an augmented safety profile and unique ability to evade an undesirable immune response. Our XPAT T cell engager platform holds the potential to deliver off-the-shelf therapies capable of redirecting T cells in the body to fight solid tumors.”

Dr. Stampacchia said: “We are delighted to have successfully led this financing for Amunix, especially in the current market environment. We are glad to have attracted a syndicate of sophisticated, long-term investors who are familiar with this ever more important therapeutic modality. We look forward to deploying this important platform to address the limitations of other approaches in the space. We see in Amunix’s next-generation XPAT T cell engager platform a great potential to address the biggest hurdle to bringing the benefits of this class to solid tumor cancers patients: on-target off-tumor toxicity.”