Shattuck Labs, a biotech startup co-located in Austin and Durham, N.C., has raised a $118 million Series B investment to continue developing cancer-fighting treatments, the company announced Monday.
San Francisco-based health care investment firm Redmile Group led the round. The company had previously raised about $82.4 million.
Other new investors in the startup included Janus Henderson Investors, Fidelity Management & Research Company, EcoR1 Capital, Hatteras Venture Partners, Avidity Partners, Partner Fund Management, Emerson Collective and Piper Sandler & Co.
Shattuck Labs was founded in 2016, and in 2017 it announced it had developed a next generation immunotherapy using so-called checkpoint infusion proteins in a collaboration with Cambridge, Mass.-based Takeda Pharmaceutical. That put it on a path for pre-clinical and discovery programs.
In 2018, the startup raised $46.6 million in equity funding, which followed a 2017 round of $7 million and roughly $3 million in debt funding.
The company plans to use the new money to advance its research with Takeda, which is now in Phase I clinical trials for multiple cancer types in the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well as a forthcoming separate Phase I trial for another protein-based treatment.
Shattuck is also eyeing a new clinical program in 2021 as it explores new compounds to fight cancer and autoimmune disease.
The funding news comes just a few months after Shattuck Labs announced Dr. Taylor Schreiber, its co-founder and chief science officer, was promoted to CEO as Josiah Hornblower shifted to a roles as chairman of the company's board.
“Over the past four years we have pioneered the development of our proprietary ARC technology platform, which consolidates checkpoint blockade and tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily (TNFRSF) agonism into single therapeutics, tackling many of the risks associated with a new biologics platform along the way,” Schreiber said in a news release. “The support from this syndicate of experienced life science investors will accelerate clinical development of multiple programs aimed to establish ARC therapeutics as an entirely new class of biologic medicine.”
Learn more about the deal in the ABJ [subscriber content].
