Chasing Biogen, the Pliant crew banks a $62M round to fuel their shot at fibrosis targets
South San Francisco-based Pliant Therapeutics has just closed a $62 million round to take their idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis drug to the clinic — the first of many fibrotic disease-targeting drugs it hopes will come out of its discovery engine.
The Series B puts Pliant in a position to progress toward clinical proof of concept for its lead small molecule drug, which is a dual inhibitor of the αvβ1 and αvβ6 integrins. As a family of transmembrane receptors that usually mediate cell adhesion, integrins — as scientific co-founder Dean Sheppard has shown in his work at UCSF — are a key driver in fibrosis across different organs.
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