On Wednesday, Triveni Bio became the latest immunology and inflammation startup this year to announce a $100 million-plus financing round.
Money has come thick and fast to I&I companies this year, and Triveni’s Series B comes less than a year after it announced a $92 million Series A. The new round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives and included Fidelity, Deep Track Capital and other previous investors in the company, like Atlas Venture and OrbiMed.
With the raise, Triveni will fund its lead experimental eczema antibody drug, TRIV-509, and plans to ask the FDA to let it start clinical trials of its lead program in the first quarter of 2025. That study will be in healthy volunteers, medical chief Bhaskar Srivastava told Endpoints News, and the company is seeking to develop the asset for atopic dermatitis, or eczema.
Srivastava joined the company in June, leaving his post as SVP of clinical development at Nimbus Therapeutics.
TRIV-509 targets kallikreins 5 and 7, and is involved in what’s called barrier dysfunction — when the skin can’t act as a proper protector from allergens and other irritants in people with atopic dermatitis.
Triveni CEO Vishal Patel described barrier dysfunction as a hallmark feature of atopic dermatitis, as well as inflammation.
“The barrier part, in particular, is novel because that is a unique part of that atopic dermatitis vicious cycle that really hasn’t been prosecuted in the past,” Patel told Endpoints.
The company is also working on a follow-on compound called TRIV-573 that combines kallikrein 5/7 inhibition with IL-13, a well-known target (one of Dupixent’s targets). Triveni’s third program is an antibody treatment for hereditary pancreatitis.