USA – Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc., a Rockville, Md.-based clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the study of nucleic acid immunotherapy platforms, closed a $61.3M financing.
The round was led by HLB Co., LTD, a global pharmaceutical company focused on developing novel cancer drugs. This represents the second closing in the investment process for the HLB Consortium, ($10M was placed in February 2020), and substantially increases their holding in Immunomic Therapeutics to 47.6% of the common stock. HLB also secured an option to make further investment into the company in the months ahead. Concurrent with the financing, five members from HLB Co., LTD will be joining the Immunomic Therapeutics Board of Directors. Proceeds will support the acceleration of Immunomic Therapeutics’ Phase II clinical trial of ITI-1000 for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), advance its emerging pipeline, the expansion of its team and infrastructure to support the future growth of the company. Led by Dr. William Hearl, CEO, Immunomic Therapeutics is a clinical stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of vaccines through its proprietary technology platform, UNiversal Intracellular Targeted Expression (UNITE), which is designed to utilize the body’s natural biochemistry to develop vaccines that generate broad immune responses. UNITE has a history of applications in various therapeutic areas, including infectious diseases, oncology, allergy and autoimmune diseases. Immunomic Therapeutics is primarily focused on applying the UNITE platform to oncology, where it could potentially have broad applications, including viral antigens, cancer antigens, neoantigens and antigen-derived antibodies as biologics. The company has built a large pipeline from UNITE with six oncology programs and two allergy programs. ITI has entered into an allergy partnership with Astellas Pharma and has formed several academic collaborations with Immuno-oncology researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, and Duke University. In addition, Immunomic Therapeutics and HLB intend to establish an Asian Brain Cancer Research Center in Seoul that will bring together the experts and science to advance research in the GBM field and to deploy ITI-1000 to the Asian population. ITI-1000 is a cell therapy powered by ITI’s UNITE platform that is currently being evaluated in a Phase II clinical trial (ATTAC-II) in collaboration with researchers at the University of Florida (Dr. Duane Mitchell) and Duke University (Dr. John Sampson). ITI-1001 is an alternative, cell-free approach to treating GBM. The company held a successful pre-IND meeting earlier this year for ITI-1001 and expects to be able to file an Investigational New Drug Application (IND) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the end of 2020. 30/04/2020
