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Zyngenia, Inc. Raises $15 Million in Series A Extension Financing
- Next-Generation Biotherapeutics Company Will Use Funds to Rapidly Advance Zybody™ Pipeline -
PR Newswire
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Zyngenia, Inc., a privately held biotherapeutics company focused on next-generation antibody drug development, announced today the completion of a $15 million Series A financing extension from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the world's leading venture capital firms. The capital will be used to continue to rapidly progress Zyngenia's pipeline of Zybodies™, which are novel, multi-specific, antibody-based molecules that address two or more biological targets with a single protein drug. The company's initial research programs focus on developing novel therapeutics for various cancers and autoimmune diseases.
"Zyngenia continues to build evidence that our single protein-combination biologics will be an important part of a new therapeutic paradigm – scientifically, medically, and economically – and this continued financial support from NEA is a vote of confidence as we advance our development of multi-specific biologic therapies," said Peter Kiener, D.Phil., President & Chief Executive Officer, Zyngenia, Inc. "To date, we've been able to leverage Zyngenia's cadre of highly experienced scientists and our robust technology platform to achieve preclinical proof of concept both in vitro and in vivo in our lead programs. The additional funding from NEA will allow us to move these programs towards the clinic and to continue to extend our technology platform. We have initiated cell line development for the manufacturing of our first two clinical candidates and expect to file INDs for clinical trials in the first half of 2012."
Zyngenia has raised a total of $25 million in Series A funds with the financing announced today plus the $10 million Series A that closed in September 2009. Zyngenia also has raised capital from the State of Maryland and Montgomery County, Maryland.
David M. Mott, NEA General Partner and Zyngenia Chairman of the Board, noted, "The Zyngenia team has made tremendous progress since NEA initially invested last fall. They have validated the technology platform, identified three lead programs for development, leased and built out state of the art laboratory and office facilities, and recruited a world class scientific and management team with over 20 employees. Zyngenia has made this tremendous progress while being very capital efficient and, in fact, leveraging our initial investment with non-dilutive funding from local governments. Multi-specificity drugs have the potential to be an important new therapeutic paradigm and Zybodies™ have advantages over other approaches. We are very excited about the technology, the team, and the product candidates at Zyngenia and look forward to their continued rapid progress."
About Zyngenia, Inc.
Founded in 2008, Zyngenia, Inc. is a privately held biotherapeutics company focused on the development of next-generation multi-specific antibody-based therapeutics. The Company uses proprietary patented technology to engineer single molecular entities that may interact with two or more targets. The multiple target strategy may create opportunities for innovative therapeutics with new mechanisms of action that are not achievable with single specificity antibodies. The company will initially focus its Zybody™ development on therapies for various cancers and autoimmune disorders while emphasizing cost-effective discovery, manufacturing and clinical development practices. Zyngenia is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland. For more information, visit www.zyngenia.com.
About New Enterprise Associates
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a leading venture capital and growth equity firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With approximately $11 billion in committed capital, NEA invests in information technology, healthcare and energy technology companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. Since the firm's founding in 1978, NEA's experienced management team has invested in over 650 companies, of which more than 165 have gone public and more than 265 have been acquired. In the U.S., NEA has two offices in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and one in Menlo Park, California. In addition, New Enterprise Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd. has offices in Bangalore and Mumbai, India and New Enterprise Associates (Beijing), Ltd. has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, China. For additional information, visit www.nea.com.
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Scientific Platform
Zyngenia has developed a Zybody™ platform technology that serves as the foundation for the company’s drug development efforts. Zybodies are single-protein combination therapeutics.
While monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have proven to be very successful drugs that allow highly selective modulation of an antigen target and have additional effector activities as well as intrinsically long half-lives that contribute to their overall therapeutic activity, they have limitations. Traditional mAbs target single antigens whereas diseases are often caused by multiple components or pathways that cannot be fully addressed through a single specificity. Currently, physicians often use combinations of individual mAbs and/or other classes of drugs to treat disease, but this has significant regulatory, developmental and economic hurdles. Zyngenia’s solution is to engineer a single molecule therapeutic (known as a Zybody™) that has the desired properties of a mAb but is able to simultaneously target several known mediators of a disease and – through this – allow for better disease intervention with the cost and development paradigm of a single agent.
In addition to creating more potent and broadly acting therapeutics, this technology will allow us to also create exquisitely selective molecules that are able to recognize subsets of cells that cannot be selectively recognized by conventional mAbs that only have a single specificity.
Finally, unlike the current bi-functional mAb formats under development at several biotechnology companies, Zyngenia’s technology is designed to allow the generation of multi-specific molecules that include, but also expand beyond bi-specificity. Since the technology is based on intact antibodies, Zyngenia believes that the molecules generated will possess desirable effector and pharmacokinetic properties that are mediated through the Fc regions.
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