Less than a year af­ter bank­ing $74.5 mil­lion in a Se­ries B, San Diego-based Kin­nate Bio­phar­ma is fol­low­ing up with a Se­ries C to bring its pipeline of pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy drugs to the clin­ic.

The two-year-old com­pa­ny just raised $98 mil­lion in a round led by RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, and is eye­ing INDs for its two lead pro­grams — ki­nase in­hibitors that tar­get BRAF, FGFR2 and FGFR3 mu­ta­tions. If all goes well in pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies, CEO Ni­ma Farzan ex­pects its BRAF pro­gram to en­ter Phase I in the first half of next year, with its FGFR pro­gram not far be­hind.

“A very small per­cent­age of pa­tients can re­spond over a long pe­ri­od of time … to a tar­get­ed ther­a­py,” Farzan told End­points News. “So we’re re­al­ly fo­cused on bring­ing drugs that ei­ther are go­ing af­ter known onco­genic dri­vers that cur­rent­ly aren’t tar­get­ed by drugs, or help­ing over­come those re­sis­tance mu­ta­tions.”

While there are cur­rent­ly FDA-ap­proved op­tions for pa­tients with Class I BRAF mu­ta­tions, Kin­nate saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op in­hibitors tar­get­ing Class II and III mu­ta­tions. Kin­nate’s in­hibitors are de­signed to block BRAF pro­tein dimers. Right now, the com­pa­ny is fo­cus­ing on pa­tients with melanoma and non-small cell lung can­cer.

Kin­nate’s FGFR can­di­dates are de­signed to ad­dress mu­ta­tions in FGFR2 fu­sion gene-pos­i­tive in­tra­hep­at­ic cholan­gio­car­ci­no­ma and FGFR3-al­tered urothe­lial car­ci­no­ma. The com­pa­ny aims to over­come re­sis­tance to cur­rent FGFR drugs on the mar­ket.

“Over time, pa­tients de­vel­op re­sis­tance to these drugs through cer­tain mu­ta­tions in FGFR that makes the cur­rent drugs not ef­fec­tive,” Farzan said.

Kin­nate has set out to de­vel­op a drug that’s ef­fec­tive against the FGFR al­ter­ation, as well as the most com­mon re­sis­tant mu­ta­tions. Farzan sees the drug ini­tial­ly as a sec­ond-line treat­ment for those who have be­come re­sis­tant to cur­rent drugs, and even­tu­al­ly as a first-line treat­ment.

The com­pa­ny will al­so use Se­ries C funds to de­vel­op its CDK12 in­hibitor, though Farzan said it is “more dif­fi­cult to say” when that pro­gram will be ready for an IND.

The Se­ries C in­clud­ed new in­vestors Viking Glob­al In­vestors, Ven­rock Health­care Cap­i­tal Part­ners, Fi­deli­ty Man­age­ment & Re­search Com­pa­ny, LLC, Janus Hen­der­son In­vestors, Sur­vey­or Cap­i­tal, Box­er Cap­i­tal of Tavi­s­tock Group, Lo­gos Cap­i­tal, and an in­vest­ment fund as­so­ci­at­ed with SVB Leerink. Re­turn­ing in­vestors Fore­site Cap­i­tal, Or­biMed, Nex­tech In­vest, and Vi­da Ven­tures al­so backed the round.

“I re­al­ly do see this not as an as­set or two we are de­vel­op­ing, but as a com­pa­ny we are build­ing,” Farzan said.

The Pax­Vax vet spent sev­en years as pres­i­dent and CEO be­fore the com­pa­ny was bought by Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions in 2018. In March, he took over for Kin­nate co-founder and for­mer CEO Stephen Kaldor.

Ap­proval of Kin­nate’s lead pro­grams “would con­tin­ue to demon­strate that tar­get­ed ther­a­pies are a sub­stan­tial ad­di­tion to the ar­ma­men­tar­i­um that physi­cians have to bat­tle can­cer. Can­cer is a … it’s kind of a nev­er-end­ing strug­gle,” Farzan said. “… It’s al­ways go­ing to try to de­vel­op mu­ta­tions and de­vel­op re­sis­tance, and so you have to con­stant­ly keep in­no­vat­ing.”

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

The biotech SPAC boom has gone almost hand-in-hand with the industry’s IPO gold rush, and this week saw more blank check companies hop aboard the train.

Leading the way is Perceptive Advisors’ fourth SPAC, appropriately named Arya Sciences Acquisition IV, which priced Friday morning after raising $130 million. And on top of that, new Ziopharm executive chair James Huang is launching his own SPAC with MSD Partners and Panacea Venture, filing S-1 paperwork Thursday with plans to raise $200 million.

Not even one month after Big Pharma took notice of Artiva when Merck signed a collaboration worth nearly $2 billion in milestones, the off-the-shelf NK cell biotech already has its next big fundraise.

Artiva returns from the venture well Friday with a $120 million Series B round, money they will use to get their first program into the clinic and to file INDs for another two candidates. The raise marks the latest development in a rapidly expanding footprint for Artiva, which, in addition to the Merck deal last month, has now raised almost $200 million since its Series A last June.