Therini Bio, a South San Francisco, CA-based biotech company that provides fibrin-targeted therapies, raised $36M in Series A funding.
The round, which brought the total amount to $62M, was co-led by Dementia Discovery Fund, MRL Ventures Fund, Sanofi Ventures, and SV Health Investors’ Impact Medicine Fund. New investor Eli Lilly and Company participated in the round, with all existing investors including Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), Dolby Family Ventures, and Foundation for a Better World.
The company intends to use the funds to advance potential investigational antibody THN391 into clinical trials.
Led by CEO and President Michael Quigley, Therini Bio is developing therapeutic candidates that selectively target the inflammatory component of fibrin, in neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and multiple sclerosis (MS), as well as in a variety of retinal diseases, such as diabetic macular edema (DME) where destructive inflammation plays a role in the disease process.
Its lead antibody, THN391, binds the inflammation-driving component of fibrin that is known to activate immune responses in neurodegenerative and ophthalmologic diseases. Importantly, based on preclinical studies to date, targeting this region does not impact or diminish fibrin’s critical role in blood clotting and coagulation.
The foundational science was licensed based on technology discovered in Katerina Akassoglou, Ph.D. laboratories at the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and formerly the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
Therini Bio was also awarded a $3M non-dilutive funding grant in 2021 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA), which will provide $1M of preclinical research funding to advance the Company’s Alzheimer’s disease program each year through 2024.
FinSMEs
27/04/2023