Aronora, Inc., a Portland-based clinical-stage biotech company, secured an investment from NYBC Ventures, the New York Blood Center’s venture fund.
The funding will enable Aronora to bring on more staff and to further the manufacturing of the company’s anti-coagulant drug candidates, CEO Erik Tucker said.
He declined to say how much NYBC invested, but since it spun out of OHSU in 2009, Aronora has raised about $60 million all told. Most of the funding has been in the form of small business grants from the National Institutes of Health.
The NYBC funding round came after Tucker met with leaders of the venture fund at a bio event, Tucker said.
“They were starting their venture arm and their focus is on noncancerous blood diseases,” he said. “So we’re one of their first investments.”
Aronora currently has eight employees and operates in a downtown high rise after leaving the OTRADI Bioscience Incubator in 2021.
Tucker and co-founder Dr. Andras Gruber demonstrated that it’s possible to target harmful blood clots, or thrombosis, without increasing the risk of bleeding, which all currently available blood thinners can produce. The two developed an innovative antibody, marking the creation of a new class of blood thinners.
“Aronora is a trailblazing company at the forefront in developing a new generation of safer blood-thinning and clot-dissolving medications,” Meg Wood, NYBC Ventures’ managing director, said. “Aronora’s transformative work will revolutionize the way we approach blood clot treatment, offering hope for millions of individuals worldwide.”
Tucker is continuing to fundraise to support Aronora’s clinical trials, which cost tens of millions of dollars. But the fundraising environment has become “pretty tough,” he said.
“A lot of VCs are pulling back, and rounds are getting smaller,” Tucker said. “VCs have a lot of money they’re sitting on, but there’s caution because there was a level of zealousness, throwing so much at biotech and it not doing a lot with it, so they’re looking at smaller investments, ones with a clear path to market. You have to have a short runway.”
Aronora has completed a Phase 2a clinical trial for both of its drug candidates and is preparing for late-stage trials.
“So we’re in a good position,” Tucker said. “A lot of companies in our space are preclinical and have product they want to push through to clinical trials. We’re poised to have a marketable product in five years.”
That depends on raising the money necessary, unless Big Pharma “wants to come along and acquire us,” Tucker said.
