China's Atom Bioscience raises $83m
Chinese inflammatory and metabolic disease drug developer Atom Bioscience has raised USD 83m in Series D funding led by local biotech specialist Kaitai Capital.
Huajin Investment Management, Nnfe Fund Management, Fortune Venture Capital, and Unifortune Investment Management also participated.
It brings total funding since the company’s inception in 2012 to about USD 165m, including a USD 45m round last year led by Xincheng Jinrui Equity Investment and GTJA Investment Group. That round also featured Kaitai, Unifortune, Efung Capital, Oriza Holdings, Livzon Pharmaceutical, and Sequoia Capital China, now HongShan.
Atom focuses on small molecule therapeutics, which are characterised by their simplicity, making them easier to manufacture but more exposed to competing products. Its main targets are gout, hyperuricemia (a blood disease related to gout), kidney disease, and a severe form of liver disease known as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
The Series D will go toward clinical trialling of the most advanced product, an orally administered treatment for chronic gout. Atom notes that the performance of existing gout drugs is far from meeting clinical needs, offering poor efficacy and posing risks of kidney failure, sudden cardiac death, or severe liver toxicity.
“A human mass balance study, which evaluates how drugs are absorbed, metabolized and excreted, showed that ABP-671 [Atom’s lead product] is mostly excreted in its original form and does not produce any similar metabolites seen with benzbromarone [an existing gout drug] which causes severe liver toxicity,” CEO Dongfang Shi said in a statement.
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