Small biotech Inipharm lands $35M to take new NASH ap­proach, di­verg­ing from RNAi com­peti­tors

A year af­ter Cir­ius Ther­a­peu­tics’ lead NASH drug flopped in a large Phase IIb tri­al, the biotech’s chief busi­ness and fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Bri­an Farmer is lead­ing an­oth­er stab at the Holy Grail of liv­er dis­ease through the small Seat­tle-based biotech Inipharm.

The Fra­zier Health­care port­fo­lio com­pa­ny land­ed a $35 mil­lion Se­ries A, bring­ing its to­tal raise to about $40 mil­lion. Farmer says he’ll use the fund­ing to push the lead pro­gram — which tar­gets the HSD17B13 gene —through IND fil­ing and in­to the clin­ic. And while the CEO and co-founder de­clined to of­fer a spe­cif­ic time­line, he said “next year is kind of a very im­por­tant year for us,” adding that they’ll be talk­ing more about da­ta and plans for hu­man tri­als.

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