Bay Area and Taipei biotech AltruBio has raised $225 million in a Series B to move forward its experimental drug for ulcerative colitis and other chronic autoimmune conditions, it said Tuesday.
The round is the latest in a surge of funding for startups that seek to treat immune and inflammatory conditions, including $400 million for Mirador Therapeutics in March and $105 million for Attovia Therapeutics earlier this month.
After working with Boehringer Ingelheim from 2005 to 2011 on a treatment for psoriasis and other I&I diseases, AltruBio rebranded from its old name, AbGenomics, in 2020. In 2021, it raised a $63 million Series A that would go toward work on its former lead drug, ALTB-168, or neihulizumab.
It believes its new asset, which it calls an immune checkpoint enhancer, has even more potential. The PSGL-1 agonist antibody, ALTB-268, aims to treat the “root cause of the fire but at the same time also put out the fire,” CEO Judy Chou said in an interview with Endpoints News.
“I always say to my team, anything -168 can do, -268 just can do better,” said Chou, who joined the startup in 2020 after serving as global head of biotech at Bayer.
ALTB-168 had been tested in more than 200 patients with four different autoimmune inflammatory diseases, including ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and acute graft-versus-host disease. But the startup decided to return to preclinical work and come up with a next-generation version.
The earlier drug “is a weekly IV dosage form, and that’s not going to be so patient-friendly for the chronic disease,” Chou said. “Even though the data looks very, very impressive,” the company felt it needed to go with a higher-efficacy, subcutaneous version, she said.
The weekly under-the-skin version is currently in a Phase 2a exploratory biomarker study. AltruBio believes its approach will balance the immune system, helping take down a notch the chronically activated immune cells in patients with UC and other inflammatory conditions, Chou said.
Before that study reads out in the middle of next year, the biotech will begin a randomized, placebo-controlled trial in UC patients who have gone through advanced treatment or who have never before taken medicines for the condition.
The Phase 2b will start at the beginning of 2025 and have results in the second half of 2026, Chou said. The Series B is slated to carry the 24-employee startup beyond that data readout, Chou said.
BVF Partners led the Series B. New investors include RA Capital Management, Cormorant Asset Management and Soleus Capital. Existing backers aMoon Fund and Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing took part in the new round alongside other undisclosed investors.