Zenas BioPharma, a Waltham, MA-based biopharmaceutical company, raised $118M in Series B funding.
The round was led by Enavate Sciences, with participation from Longitude Capital, Vivo Capital, Rock Springs Capital, Perceptive Advisors, Agent Capital, Pivotal bioVenture Partners, Superstring Capital, Fairmount, Wellington Management, Tellus BioVentures, Quan Venture Fund, and Xencor. In connection with the Series B financing, Enavate Sciences CEO Jim Boylan, Longitude Capital Co-founder and Managing Director Patrick Enright, and Vivo Capital Managing Partner Hongbo Lu have joined the Zenas Board of Directors.
The company intends to use the funds for the clinical advancement of its lead product candidate Obexelimab, including a global Phase 3 registration trial in patients with IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD), which will be initiated in late 2022. In addition, the new funding will progress other global autoimmune disease programs into clinical development in 2023.
Led by Lonnie Moulder, Zenas BioPharma is a biopharmaceutical company committed to advancing and commercializing immune-based therapies for patients around the world. The company is advancing Obexelimab, an investigational phase III-stage, novel bifunctional antibody with first-in-class potential that inhibits B-cell lineages that express CD19. In early-stage clinical studies, obexelimab effectively demonstrated inhibition of B-cell function without depleting the cells and generated an encouraging treatment effect in patients with multiple autoimmune diseases. Zenas acquired exclusive worldwide rights to obexelimab from Xencor, Inc.
IgG4-RD is a chronic and serious, fibroinflammatory disease typically affecting multiple organs and sites (e.g., pancreas, liver, kidney, bile duct, salivary and lacrimal glands).
