GV20 Oncotherapy, a biotechnology company with expertise in novel target identification and antibody drug discovery in immuno-oncology, has completed its Series B financing.
This round of financing was led by Coatue Management, with participation from existing investors IDG Capital, 3W Investment, Watson Capital, Linear Capital, and additional investors.
“GV20” is the acupuncture point on top of the head, implying the company’s goal of finding cancer vulnerabilities. The company was cofounded in 2016 by Shirley Liu, a Professor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Ted Xiao, a former postdoctoral fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.
GV20 Oncotherapy applies novel genomics and AI techniques to accelerate antibody drug discovery and development for cancer immunotherapy. Over the last few years, GV20 has built a proprietary genetic screening and functional genomics platform for target identification.
In addition, the company has established a proprietary AI platform to de novo design fully-human functional antibodies with favorable developability profiles, allowing time and cost-efficient antibody drug discovery. Combining the power of these two technology platforms, GV20 has built a solid antibody drug portfolio against novel and challenging targets.
“It is a very exciting time with high-throughput genomics, AI and cancer immunology converging on GV20 Oncotherapy. We believe our platforms have demonstrated unique capabilities to identify potent antibodies against multiple targets. We are well-poised to crack the antibody drug discovery code and bring effective immunotherapy drugs to cancer patients,” said Shirley Liu.
Proceeds from this financing will be predominantly used to advance GV20 Oncotherapy’s lead antibody program into the clinic in the coming year while expanding its drug discovery portfolio against additional immune-oncology targets.
The lead antibody program is directed against a novel immunotherapy target where internal pre-clinical studies have demonstrated remarkable in vivo efficacy as a single-agent as well as in combination with established immunotherapy. GV20 intends to develop select additional clinical antibody candidates through external biopharmaceutical collaborations.
Kai Jiang, partner at Coatue, said: “The progress made by GV20 demonstrates the company’s ability to rapidly identify novel targets and fully-human functionally efficacious antibodies, and initiate development to anticipated clinical trials. GV20 is poised to become a technology leader in antibody discovery research and immunotherapy drug development in the coming years.”
