Atre­ca banks a $125M mega-round as it builds a pipeline of an­ti­bod­ies for can­cer and pon­ders IPO tim­ing

In an­oth­er sign that the mon­ey back­ing up­start biotechs — and the val­ue at­tached to new drugs — con­tin­ues to swell, Red­wood City, CA-based Atre­ca to­day is pulling back the cov­ers from a $125 mil­lion mega-round de­signed to get through the ini­tial pre­clin­i­cal phase of de­vel­op­ment.

The work at Atre­ca cen­ters on a plat­form tech that takes tis­sue sam­ples from can­cer pa­tients to ex­plore for ide­al an­ti­bod­ies, us­ing B cells as their sound­ing board. If that seems fa­mil­iar, that’s be­cause it’s the same ba­sic tech ap­proach that Seat­tle-based On­coRe­sponse is us­ing, as I re­port­ed ear­li­er in the week with their $40 mil­lion round.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER