USA – Presage Biosciences, Inc., a Seattle, WA-based biotechnology company pioneering a new cancer drug development approach using its Comparative In Vivo Oncology (CIVO®) intratumoral microdosing platform, closed a $13m financing and commenced new research collaborations with Merck, known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, and Maverick Therapeutics.
The financing included $7m raised from new investors, including the LabCorp Venture Fund, Bristol Myers Squibb, and InHarv Partners Ltd, and an additional $6m convertible note from Takeda Ventures will convert to equity. This round brings the total equity raised to date to $35m.The company intends to use the funds for the expansion of its existing network of clinical sites in the U.S. and Australia, as well as development of next-generation CIVO microdose injection devices designed to access a wider spectrum of cancers. Led by Rich Klinghoffer, PhD, CEO, Presage is an oncology company pioneering a new drug development approach to assess novel therapeutics and combinations directly in human tumors with its patented CIVO intratumoral microdosing platform. The CIVO platform is intended to enable simultaneous assessment of responses to multiple drugs or drug combinations directly in a single tumor while still in a patient’s body. Presage also partners with oncology-focused pharmaceutical companies through strategic alliances to provide preclinical data to discover effective drug combinations.The research collaborations with Merck and Maverick will utilize CIVO to evaluate novel investigational oncology agents in Phase 0 trials, bringing the total number of partners utilizing Presage’s approach to early drug evaluation to five. Presage has ongoing collaborations with Takeda and other large pharmaceutical organizations for Phase 0 trials with CIVO.03/03/2021
