On December 23, 2020 Cothera Bioscience, the parent company of Percans Oncology, reported that completed a series-B financing of nearly 30 million dollars (Press release, Cothera Bioscience, DEC 23, 2020, View Source [SID1234618853]). Led by Tsingsong Capital, this round of financing involves several domestic and foreign funds companies, such as CMB International, Sherpa Healthcare Partners, New World Investment, Langsheng Investment, Kunlun Fund, and Harbinger Venture. Old shareholders Legend Capital and Legend Star also participated in this investment as before. The funds raised will mainly be used to accelerate the global clinical development of the company’s multiple tumor-targeted innovative drugs.
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Founded by the core members of the founding team of the formerly well-known CRO CrownBio, Cothera Bioscience is an innovation-driven cancer drug company, focusing on the research and development of noveltumor-targeted drugs. By combining conditional reprogramming primary tumor cell culture technology and high-content drug screening system, the i-CR technology platform independently developed by Percans Oncology proliferate the primary tumor cells in vitro in a high-efficiency and undifferentiated way and can preserve the heterogeneity of the patient’s tumor.. The platform also uses patient primary tumor cells to screen efficient drug in vitro with a high-content drug screening system, making it more suitable for individualized drug screening and new drug development for clinical patients. Through cooperation with top domestic oncology medical centers to carry out a number of prospective comparative clinical trials, Cothera Bioscience has preliminarily proved that the i-CR system can effectively predict the actual clinical response of drugs, and it is expected to greatly improve the efficiency and clinical success rate of new anti-tumor drug development.
Taking advantage of the high correlation between the i-CR technology platform and clinical drug response, Cothera Bioscience has developed a series of new anti-cancer drugs in the fields of synthetic lethality and immunotherapy. And a number of international and domestic patents have been applied for the results of early research and development.
PC-002, the core product of Cothera Bioscience, is a first-in-class small molecule drug for MYC gene mutation tumors. MYC protein is highly expressed in more than 50% of tumors and is one of the most important "undruggable" tumor targets. PC-002 targets MYC protein degradation through a unique MOA and selectively induces MYC-dependent tumor cell to undergo apoptosis. PC-002 is about to undergo a Phase 2 clinical trial in the United States, and is expected to be quickly approved with the results of the Phase 2 trial as a blockbuster product for pan-cancer. The company’s another product, CTB-02, aiming at pan-KRAS variant bowel cancer and non-small cell lung cancer, is expected to enter Phase 1 clinical trials in Australia in 2021.
Dr. Wu Yue, co-founder and CEO of Cothera Bioscience, said: "Thank all investors for your support to the company. We will work together to explore new areas of new anti-tumor drug development and discover new values. The achievements of Cothera Bioscience come from the courage and strength to persist in science and innovation, and do what others can’t do. We will continue to base ourselves on the development of the world’s first-in-class drugs, give full play to the barriers and expertise of translational medicine that the company has accumulated over the years, fully understand the development of new drugs based on the solid drug mechanism research and tumor biology cognition to greatly increase its success rate, exploit the global market with innovative products, and strive to solve the unmet medical needs of cancer patients."
Dr. Zhang Song, a partner of Tsingsong Capital, said: "We are optimistic about the rich drug development experience and profound understanding about translational tumor medicine of the original founding team of Crown Bioscience International headed by Dr. Wu Yue, and firmly support the Cothera team’s exploration and drug development of multiple "undruggable" targets based on a unique drug screening system. Tsingsong Capital hopes to cooperate with the team for a long time from now on to help the company develop the first-in-class tumor-targeted drugs on a global scale in the context of intensified competition in the innovative drug market, and looks forward to working with the company to bring new breakthroughs in tumor treatment."
Zhang Xiao, Managing Director of China eCapital, said: "Cothera Bioscience has a world-class translational medicine team. Based on its unique i-CR drug screening platform, Cothera Bioscience has been focusing on drug development for undruggable targets for many years, and has made important progress in the research and development of new drugs for targets such as Myc and kras. We are honored to be able to help Cothera Bioscience complete this round of financing. And we are looking forward to more clinical progress of the company in the future, which will benefit more patients."