Arvinas Secures $41.6M Series B Financing - Appoints New Board Members
NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Arvinas LLC ("Arvinas"), a private biotechnology company creating a new class of drugs based on targeted protein degradation, today announced that it has closed a Series B financing round of $41.6 million.
All of the initial Series A investors, including the two lead Series A investors, Canaan Partners and 5AM Ventures, participated in this new round. Three additional leading private venture investment firms joined the round: RA Capital Management, OrbiMed, and New Leaf Venture Partners.
"We were impressed by the scientific accomplishments of Arvinas in their first two years and enthusiastic about the robust pipeline entering clinical trials in 2016," said Andrew Levin, M.D., Ph.D., of RA Capital Management, which led the Series B financing. "Arvinas has a truly unique platform degrading targets of interest, within and outside of oncology, and they are using this powerful platform to rapidly build a portfolio of bifunctional small molecules. We are pleased to join them in this endeavor."
Arvinas is harnessing the body's own natural degradation and removal system to target and degrade pathogenic proteins by using bifunctional small molecules, Proteolysis-Targeting Chimeras (PROTACs). PROTACs recruit an E3 ubiquitin ligase to a specific targeted protein, labeling that protein for elimination by the ubiquitin/proteasome system.
In addition to financial resources, this round of investment brings impressive experience and intellectual resources to Arvinas in the form of three new members of the Board of Directors:
- Andrew Levin, M.D., Ph.D., Managing Director, RA Capital Management
- Stephen Squinto, Ph.D., Venture Partner, OrbiMed
- Liam Ratcliffe, M.D., Ph.D., Managing Director, New Leaf Venture Partners
Manuel Litchman, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Arvinas commented: "We are gratified by the continued support of our Series A investors and thrilled with our new investment partners. Andrew, Steve, and Liam bring remarkable track records of accomplishment and knowledge to our Board; they, along with the resources of their firms, will help us succeed as we move forward. The Series B gives us the capital we need to advance an aggressive pipeline of targeted degraders into the clinic and to continue to strengthen our unique platform."
"This has been a great month for Arvinas, announcing a collaboration with Genentech, being named a 'Fierce 15' biotech, and now completing an investment round with several marquee firms," said Tim Shannon, M.D., Chairman of the Board of Arvinas and General Partner, Canaan Partners.
About Arvinas
Arvinas is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing new small molecules aimed at degrading disease-causing cellular proteins. We are translating these innovative protein degradation approaches into novel drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Many diseases are a result of "rogue," uncontrolled proteins, whose absence could bring great clinical benefit to patients. To address these pathological intracellular proteins, Arvinas is developing a new drug paradigm based on the elimination of these proteins. Our innovative protein degradation technology uses small molecule drugs to "tag" specific proteins to be degraded by the ubiquitin/proteasome system (UPS), which is responsible for the normal turnover of most proteins within the cell.
Based on groundbreaking research conducted at Yale University by our Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor, Craig Crews, PhD, Arvinas has developed a platform technology to induce the loss of intracellular proteins: Proteolysis-Targeting Chimera (PROTAC). The ability of PROTAC-based drugs to induce protein degradation (instead of protein inhibition) offers the advantage of potentially targeting "undruggable" as well as "druggable" elements of the proteome. This greatly expands our ability to create drugs for many new, previously unapproachable targets. For more information, visit www.arvinas.com.
CONTACT:
Arvinas Media Contact
Carolyn Hawley
[email protected]
SOURCE Arvinas
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