California biotech Attovia Therapeutics is back with a $105 million Series B just 11 months after unveiling with $60 million.
The Fremont-based startup eyes a series of clinical trials in the crowded inflammation and immunology field with the new money. It will enter human studies in the coming months for its lead program in atopic dermatitis and bring a second biologic into the clinic next year. Overall, the money will bankroll the first two assets through Phase 1 and into Phase 2, as well as take a third discovery program into the clinic, CEO Tao Fu told Endpoints News.
Fu highlighted the “crossover” profile of investors in its Goldman Sachs-led Series B, which gives Attovia “flexibility” in determining whether the public markets are its next step.
While the IPO window is still largely shut, the drumbeat of large, nine-figure financings has been almost endless so far in 2024. Attovia’s financing, revealed Thursday morning, represents the 37th such megaround disclosed by a drug developer so far this year, according to an Endpoints tally.
Entering a crowded space
Born out of precision proteomics company Alamar Biosciences, Attovia will largely focus on inflammation and immunology, or I&I, an area of biopharma R&D that has picked up steam thanks to some high-profile acquisitions and a string of approvals.
In the lead at Attovia is ATTO-1310, an anti-IL-31 biologic that the biotech will test for eczema and other pruritic diseases. The FDA and European Medicines Agency are both currently reviewing an approval application for an IL-31 inhibitor. Those regulators, and ones in four other countries, are also reviewing Galderma’s anti-IL-31 monoclonal antibody nemolizumab for both prurigo nodularis and atopic dermatitis. The dermatology company, which went public earlier this year, licensed the asset from Chugai Pharmaceutical in 2016.
Attovia hopes to create a less frequent treatment option. Galderma’s was delivered every four weeks in clinical trials. Attovia believes ATTO-1310, also an under-the-skin treatment, can be dosed every three months based on non-human primate data, Fu said.
The biotech thinks it can do so with biparatopic nanobodies. Its molecule binds to two sites on the same protein targets, which Attovia believes will get the antibody to bind more tightly to the target and lead to greater specificity. Even if one arm falls off, the other will still be clinging on.
The biotech’s second program, named ATTO-002, goes after both IL-31 and IL-13. “We basically built two best-in-class single binders into one molecule,” Fu said.
Attovia will choose a development candidate in the second half of this year and file an IND next year, it said. It will explore undisclosed immune-mediated diseases.
Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent is the most-known IL-13 inhibitor (it also blocks IL-4), and others are also in the space, including Eli Lilly and Apogee Therapeutics. Lilly resubmitted its candidate, dubbed lebrikizumab, after the FDA rejected it last fall. Apogee, meanwhile, raised $483 million in a public offering after releasing interim Phase 1 data in March.
As the 25-employee biotech works on becoming a clinical-stage company, it will “hopefully do some discovery collaboration with pharmaceutical companies,” Fu said. In the 2010s, Fu worked on business development and M&A at Johnson & Johnson and Bristol Myers Squibb. He was then an executive at Portola Pharmaceuticals before becoming president of Zai Lab in 2018.
When Attovia emerged last June, it also mentioned the potential of working in the red-hot field of antibody-drug conjugates as well, but cancer is no longer core to the startup’s development path. “We still have some effort in drug conjugate, but I think really the goal is to generate some preclinical proof-of-concept data and then really try to partner,” Fu said.
In addition to Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Cormorant Asset Management, Attovia’s other investors include Nextech Ventures, Redmile Group, EcoR1 Capital, Marshall Wace, Logos Capital, Frazier Life Sciences, venBio and Illumina Ventures. Goldman’s Colin Walsh joined the board.
Cormorant, one of Attovia’s new investors, has been relatively active in this year’s megarounds, backing BridgeBio’s oncology spinout, neuroscience cell therapy startup Neurona Therapeutics and obesity and anti-aging player BioAge Labs, among others.