RA Capital leads round for China's Connect Biopharma

Qiming Venture Partners re-upped while Boxer Capital, HBM Healthcare Investment, and Lilly Asia Ventures came in as new investors. In conjunction with the financing, Derek DiRocco, a principal at RA Capital, will join the Connect Biopharma board.

Founded in 2012, Connect develops drugs that help manipulate the body’s immune system to treat conditions such as inflammation and cancer. It is headquartered in Suzhou and has operations in Melbourne and San Diego.

The new capital will support ongoing phase-two clinical trials for drugs that target dermatitis and ulcerative colitis. Connect will also move a small molecule treatment for pruritus into phase-one trials later this year. The company has two other less mature small molecule drugs in its development pipeline.

Connect has built its own screening platform, based on the biology of T-cell functions, that rapidly identifies molecules with development potential. This is said to be more efficient than traditional drug discovery approaches.

 “Connect’s proprietary immune modulation technology platform can transform the development of novel therapies for a wide array of serious inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that have significant unmet clinical need,” said DiRocco.

He said RA Capital has been impressed by the rapid development of Connect's drug portfolio, suggesting it could "yield multiple products with blockbuster potential."  

Advantech Capital led a $55 million Series B round for the company last year. This was followed by a $20 million Series A round in 2017 with Qiming in the lead. Connect's earliest investors - who took part in a 5 million pre-Series A - are Cowin Venture Capital, Anlongmed Fund, and XinYue Equity.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Healthcare
• China
• Pharmaceuticals
• Lilly Asia Ventures
• Qiming Venture Partners