Agomab Therapeutics is benefiting from Sanofi’s push to become an immunology powerhouse.
The Antwerp-based biotech said Friday that the French drug giant and Invus are new investors in its $89 million Series D that arrived one year after its $100 million Series C. Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim have also backed Agomab.
The company wasn’t seeking additional money. “The $100 million is still in the bank,” Agomab CEO Tim Knotnerus said in an interview.
But after receiving inbound interest from Sanofi, the biotech’s execs discussed it with the board and then did a “very selective reach-out” to other investors. It took only a month to close the round, the CEO said.
The new financing will fund an ongoing Phase 2a of Agomab’s lead therapy — an oral small molecule for a subset of Crohn’s disease patients — and another oral drug candidate already in Phase 1 for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. It also plans to take a MET agonistic antibody into human studies in the first half of next year for liver cirrhosis.
Agomab anticipates interim data for the first 40 of 90 patients from the Phase 2a of AGMB-129 in early 2025. Investigators are testing the gut-restricted ALK5 inhibitor in patients with fibrostenosing Crohn’s disease, which impacts about half the people with the inflammatory bowel disease. It has the FDA fast track tag.
“Can we indeed avoid the known cardio toxicity that is associated with ALK5?” Knotnerus said. “We believe we can because of the way our compound has been designed, so that we have high local exposure of our ALK5 asset in the gastrointestinal tract and very low systemic exposure.”
In the first half of next year, the biotech also expects to have the first batch of healthy volunteer data from the Phase 1 trial in IPF for its ALK5 inhibitor that is lung-restricted, according to Knotnerus.
IPF leads to difficulties with breathing and impairs multiple other functions, eventually leading to death for many patients within about five years. Boehringer and Roche each market medicines for IPF, and both were approved by the FDA 10 years ago. Many drug developers are following up with next-generation medicines.
Amid a broader restructuring of its business, Sanofi has continued to bet on oncology and I&I. In recent months, it invested in several companies developing IPF medicines like Vicore Pharma and Graviton Bioscience. The company also earmarked up to $1.5 billion for the anti-TL1A race in a partnership with Teva.
Agomab broke cover in 2019 with a $23 million Series A. It snagged a $74 million Series B in 2021 and bought Spanish startup Origo Biopharma later that year.
The 60-employee startup also now has an office in Cambridge, MA. It added former Seagen leader David Epstein to its board this summer, and Pierre Kemula — who headed finance at CureVac when it went public — is set to start as CFO on Nov. 1.