On September 11, 2024 Radiant Biotherapeutics, a preclinical biotechnology company developing an antibody platform to deliver transformative therapies for patients facing life-changing disease, reported it has closed a $35 million Series A financing (Press release, Radiant Biotherapeutics, SEP 11, 2024, View Source [SID1234646524]). The round is co-led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Amplitude Ventures of Canada.
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Additional participants in the Series A include new investors BDC Capital, the investment arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada, through its Thrive Venture Fund, and abrdn, an investment fund managed by abrdn Inc.; and existing investors FACIT, Alexandria Venture Investments and Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP).
Radiant has built a best-in-class, proprietary, multi-valent, multi-specific antibody platform called Multabody. The funds will enable Radiant to further develop the company’s lead clinical candidate, 4-1BB, and move it towards clinical trials.
"These supportive investors share our vision of delivering powerful, multi-functional biologics with the potential to advance treatments for patients suffering from debilitating and life-threatening illnesses," said Arthur J. Fratamico, President and CEO of Radiant. "This investment enables us to further demonstrate the unique power and breadth of our platform across multiple therapeutic areas with a focus in oncology, inflammation and immunology, and global health and infectious disease including HIV."
Multabody therapeutics are able to overcome the shortcomings of existing antibody approaches by leveraging remarkable avidity, or binding strength, on their intended targets. Multabodies also exploit multi-specificity, enabling targeting of different disease-modifying proteins as well as multiple epitopes on the same target. Together, these qualities give Multabody therapeutics exceptional potency against both solid tumors and blood cancers, infectious disease pathogens, and other targets in multiple therapeutic areas.
"This financing will enable the next stage in Radiant’s growth and move the company towards the clinic as it continues to demonstrate the superiority of the Multabody platform against therapeutic targets that cannot be treated with traditional antibodies," said Bharat Srinivasa, Ph.D., principal at Amplitude Ventures. "We are investing to accelerate Radiant’s transition to clinical stage and to expand its pipeline in additional therapeutic areas."
Radiant Biotherapeutics was founded in 2020 and is built around foundational science developed at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto and the University of Toronto, based on and including work performed at the laboratories of Jean-Philippe Julien, Ph.D., senior scientist at SickKids and associate professor at University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and Bebhinn Treanor, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Toronto. The company emerged from stealth mode in 2023 following a seed investment led by Amplitude Ventures, FACIT, TIAP and Alexandria Venture Investments. Radiant maintains offices in Toronto and Philadelphia.