ARMO BioSciences, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, today announced the successful completion of a $50 million Series C private financing. ARMO intends to use the proceeds from the financing to support the clinical development of its lead product candidate, AM0010 for the treatment of advanced solid tumors, and its pipeline of immunotherapies, including cytokines and an anti-Programmed Cell Death Protein (anti-PD-1) monoclonal antibody checkpoint inhibitor.
The Series C financing included all of ARMO’s existing investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), OrbiMed, DAG Ventures and NanoDimension, as well as new investors HBM Healthcare Investments, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Celgene Corporation, Industrial Investors Group and certain private investment funds advised by Clough Capital Partners L.P.
“This financing enables us to advance our immunotherapy pipeline, in particular our lead compound AM0010, as we aim to improve the treatment outcomes for cancer patients that do not respond to current immuno-oncology therapies,” said Peter Van Vlasselaer, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of ARMO. “AM0010 primes the tumor environment to become more responsive to immune-mediated therapies. In ongoing clinical trials, AM0010 has demonstrated durable clinical responses as a single agent and in combination with standard-of-care chemotherapies or anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibodies in melanoma, lung, renal, pancreatic, colorectal and breast cancers. This financing enables us to move forward and initiate the first of several planned registration-enabling phase 2/3 studies.”
“Despite recent breakthroughs in the immuno-oncology space, the majority of patients with immune-sensitive cancers unfortunately do not have long-term responses and many types of cancer are not responsive to these therapies at all,” said Beth Seidenberg, M.D., General Partner at KPCB. “ARMO’s unique approach in the immuno-oncology space offers the potential to expand the number of patients who are responsive to immunotherapies by using AM0010 to load tumors with activated cytotoxic T cells to attack tumors that have become refractory or unresponsive to these treatments.”