Near­ly two years af­ter draw­ing an $85 mil­lion Se­ries B, Shang­hai-based Har­bour Bio­Med has an­nounced a new large fund­ing round.

In what they’re billing as a “Se­ries B+,” Har­bour has raised $75 mil­lion to help push the biotech’s an­ti­bod­ies fur­ther in the clin­ic and de­vel­op more in-house can­di­dates. The round in­clud­ed new in­vestors such as SK Hold­ings, Greater Bay Area Fund and Efung Cap­i­tal, who joined re­turn­ing funds Leg­end Cap­i­tal, Ad­van­Tech and GIC, al­so known as Sin­ga­pore’s sov­er­eign wealth fund.

At­ul Desh­pande

“The lat­est fund­ing round is ac­tu­al­ly a con­tin­u­a­tion of the pre­vi­ous fund­ing round,” At­ul Desh­pande, Har­bour’s top US ex­ec­u­tive, told End­points News. “Many of these in­vestors were ac­tu­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in in­vest­ing in the B round, but due to var­i­ous rea­sons, they weren’t able to, so they came back to us and we ex­tend­ed the fund­ing to com­plete just a cou­ple weeks ago.”

Har­bour’s as­cent has been rapid, at least when mea­sured ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly. The com­pa­ny was found­ed by Jing­song Wang, the for­mer head of Sanofi’s Chi­na R&D who left the French drug­mak­er at the end of 2015 to con­sult for At­las Ven­tures. In 2016, he found­ed Har­bour Bio­Med in Shang­hai and, with ven­ture back­ing, pur­chased an At­las-backed com­pa­ny called Har­bour An­ti­bod­ies.

The At­las com­pa­ny, based in Cam­bridge and Rot­ter­dam, had de­vel­oped a plat­form of trans­genic mice and had been out-li­cens­ing it to biotechs and Big Phar­mas, in­clud­ing Pfiz­er and Eli Lil­ly. Wang thought he could turn that plat­form in­to an in-house pipeline, Desh­pande said. The move al­so in­stant­ly gave his Har­bour a foot­print on the three con­ti­nents — a foot­print the com­pa­ny hasn’t failed to play up.

Jing­song Wang

“Well, with op­er­a­tions in the US, EU and Chi­na, I be­lieve Har­bour Bio­Med is al­ready an MNC [mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion], right?” Wang told Phar­ma Board­room last year, in re­sponse to a ques­tion about what Har­bour can do that mul­ti-na­tion­als like Sanofi can’t.

While de­vel­op­ing their in-house ca­pac­i­ty, Wang be­gan seek­ing as­sets that could be brought in­to the clin­ic more quick­ly. He inked an up-to $350 mil­lion deal on a PD-L1 with Chi­nese biotech Kelun, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the South Ko­re­an biotech HanAll on a pair of an­ti­bod­ies for au­toim­mune and in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­eases, and a deal with Glen­mark (now Ich­nos) on a bis­pe­cif­ic for sol­id tu­mors. The two HanAll drugs quick­ly en­tered the clin­ic in three dif­fer­ent tri­als in Chi­na.

The new fund­ing will par­tial­ly go to fi­nanc­ing their first glob­al tri­al for their first in-house can­di­date. That drug, HBM4003, is a CT­LA-4 in­hibitor for ad­vanced sol­id tu­mors. It dif­fers from tra­di­tion­al CT­LA-4 drugs, such as Yer­voy, in that in­stead of con­sist­ing of four dif­fer­ent chains — the two light chains and two heavy chains that make up most an­ti­bod­ies — it on­ly has the heavy chains.

These an­ti­bod­ies are sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er than their cousin, Desh­pande said, and showed bet­ter ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty in pre­clin­i­cal mod­els than their con­ven­tion­al coun­ter­parts. The mech­a­nism be­hind that, though, is not com­plete­ly clear. The first tri­al, which just got FDA ap­proval to open sites in the US, will hope­ful­ly pro­vide a bet­ter an­swer.

“We don’t know yet,” Desh­pande said.

The average level of investment required for a biotech start-up to succeed is increasing every year, elevating the pressure even further on venture capital to make smart financial investments. Financial investment alone, however, does not always guarantee that exciting innovations can be transformed into real businesses that make a meaningful difference to patients.

Beyond just capital

At Astellas Venture Management (AVM) – a wholly-owned venture capital organization within Astellas, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area – capital is just one of the ingredients we offer to add value to our biotechnology investments and partnerships. We generally take a strategic investor approach for companies in our invested portfolio, providing access to expertise, technology and/or resources in addition to the injection of finance. An equity investment from AVM can include access to Astellas’ research and development (R&D) capabilities and expertise, and a global network of partner academic institutions and biotechnology companies, to help advance and accelerate the start-up’s innovation.

Unum $UMRX is working its way through a survival plan of sorts.

After getting hit with a trio of FDA holds in its brief public history and triggering its second pivot to a new lead drug program while laying off 60% of the staff, the troubled penny stock biotech Unum Therapeutics has hatched new plans to secure financial backing while lining up a go-forward strategy for the company.

First, Lincoln Park Capital Fund has agreed to buy up to $25 million of the long-suffering stock, as Unum directs. And the executive team — led by CEO Chuck Wilson — has put everything on the table for consideration: a sale, acquisition, merger, licensing deal, you name it. The ACTR707 program, meanwhile, is being formally wrapped up — their second failed lead program.