Elephas Announces $41.5 Million in Series B Funding

ARCH Venture Partners leads round to advance company's novel live tumor diagnostic platform

MADISON, Wis., Sept. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Elephas Biosciences Corporation (Elephas), a private company, announced today that it has raised $41.5 million in Series B funding. ARCH Venture Partners led the round, and were joined by new investors, Moore Strategic Ventures and Tao Capital Partners. Continuing investments were made by Northpond Ventures, Sands Capital, and WARF Ventures. Prior investments include $20 million from the Series A and $8 million from the founder and early seed investors.

Elephas is developing an oncology diagnostics platform to predict response to immunotherapy. The platform utilizes live fragments from a patient biopsy and treats those fragments with potential therapies and combinations. The latest advances in cancer biology combined with multi-modal imaging are used to assess how patients will respond before beginning treatment.  

Elephas is launching two human clinical trials on the platform in the next quarter and plans to share initial clinical data in 2023. The company also plans to make the platform available to biopharma researchers next year. Oncology drugs remain the largest pharmaceutical therapeutic area, with immunotherapies emerging in the last decade as effective and powerful tools in the fight against cancer.

"Our mission at Elephas is to improve care for cancer patients," stated Maneesh Arora, founder and CEO of Elephas. "We are grateful for the support of these world-class venture firms who believe in what we are doing and are committed to helping us get there."

"Technology that will allow patients to receive the most effective therapy quickly, before time and resources are spent on ineffective options, will change the game for those diagnosed with cancer," ARCH Venture Partners' Paul Berns added. "We are excited to partner with the company to bring this novel solution to patients."

XMS Capital Partners acted as financial advisor to the company.

ARCH Venture Partners' Paul Berns will join the Elephas board of directors and ARCH's Keith Crandell will be joining as a board observer. This follows the recent appointment by the company of Steven Galson, the former director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at FDA, as independent director. 

Disruption in healthcare is being accelerated by the need for improved diagnostics, novel pharmaceutical therapies, and the shift to patient-centric solutions. With the mission to tackle the massive oncology dilemma, Elephas is leading the way to change how clinicians treat cancer patients. By harnessing the latest advances in cancer biology, multimodal microscopy, and artificial intelligence, the Elephas platform has the ability to empower clinical decision making and accelerate drug development. We plan to use the power of our platform to deliver a global solution that can revolutionize cancer treatment for every individual. To learn more, visit us at www.elephas.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

ARCH Venture Partners invests in life science and advanced technology companies and is one of the world's leading early-stage venture firms. The firm is a recognized leader in commercializing technologies developed at academic institutions, corporate research groups and national laboratories. ARCH invests primarily in companies it co-founds with leading scientists and entrepreneurs, bringing innovations in life sciences and physical sciences to market. For more information visit www.archventure.com.

Northpond Ventures is a multi-billion dollar science-driven venture capital firm based in Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA; and Bethesda, MD. Northpond has been named one of the three most active lead biotech investors in 2021 by Crunchbase, and the most active lead investor in life science solutions and molecular diagnostics by Silicon Valley Bank. It is particularly engaged in the research ecosystem, having founded a bioengineering laboratory at Harvard, and sponsored a prize for women entrepreneurs at MIT. It has led over 50 financings over the past several years, with a high percentage having an academic origin. Learn more at npv.vc. 

Moore Strategic Ventures, LLC is the privately held investment company for Louis M. Bacon, Founder and CEO of Moore Capital Management, LP.

Tao Capital Partners is a family office that invests in technology, alternative energy and transportation, healthcare, education, sustainable food & agriculture, consumer, and real estate businesses that have a positive impact. Tao is an active investor with the ability to support companies through various stages of their life-cycle.

Sands Capital is an active, long-term investor in leading innovative businesses globally. Our approach combines analytical rigor and creative thinking to identify high-quality growth businesses that are creating the future. Through an integrated investment platform spanning venture capital, growth equity and public equity, we provide growth capital solutions to institutions and fund sponsors in more than 40 countries.

WARF Ventures actively invests in startups with University of Wisconsin-Madison technology and has done so over two decades. WARF Ventures is part of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) which helps steward the cycle of research, discovery, commercialization, and investment for the university. WARF manages more than 2,000 patents and an investment portfolio as it funds university research, obtains patents for campus discoveries and licenses inventions to industry. For more information, visit warf.org and view  WARF's Cycle of Innovation.   

SOURCE Elephas