CEO Charlene Liao (Immune-Onc)

Go­ing head-to-head with Mer­ck on I/O, Genen­tech vets raise fresh round and en­ter clin­ic

Three years af­ter con­vinc­ing two ex-Genen­tech col­leagues to join her on a hunt of a new form of im­muno-on­col­o­gy, Char­lene Liao and her start­up, Im­mune-Onc, are in the clin­ic and armed with a new round of cash to push the lead can­di­date through.

Im­mune-Onc an­nounced on Tues­day $73 mil­lion in new fund­ing, which they’re call­ing a Se­ries B1 and B2 round, to fund a clin­i­cal tri­al for lead can­di­date IO-202 for acute myeloid leukemia, and ad­vance a pipeline of im­mune-mod­i­fy­ing can­cer treat­ments that is in­creas­ing­ly putting them in com­pe­ti­tion with big­ger ri­vals, in­clud­ing Mer­ck. The round was led by Ocean­pine Cap­i­tal, a Chi­nese tech and biotech-fo­cused VC.

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