Black Diamond Therapeutics Secures $85 Million Series C Financing to Advance Lead Oncology Drug Candidates and Expand MAP Platform

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned from foreign media reports that on December 5, 2019, Black Diamond Therapeutics, a precision oncology medicine company, announced the completion of an $85 million Series C financing round. The round was led by Boxer Capital, a subsidiary of Tavistock Life Sciences, with participation from more than ten corporate and institutional investors, including new investors Wellington Management Company, BVF Partners LP, Deerfield Management, and Janus Henderson Investors.

Concurrent with this financing round, Dr. Samarth Kulkarni will join the Board of Directors of Black Diamond Therapeutics. Dr. Kulkarni currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of CRISPR Therapeutics AG and is a recognized leader in biotechnology strategy and operations, bringing extensive industry experience to the role.

Black Diamond Therapeutics initially operated in stealth mode in New York and at the Ridgeline Discovery Engine in Basel. Since its inception, the company has raised a total of $194 million. This round of financing will be used for:

- Conduct research on oncogenic driver mutations in ErbB kinases, including epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), to advance the development of lead candidate drugs;

- Initiated Phase 1/2 clinical trials of its most advanced drug candidate, BDTX-189, in the first half of 2020;

- Continue to expand its early-stage research programs and proprietary Mutation-Allosteric-Pharmacology (MAP) platform to identify oncogenic mutation targets.

Black Diamond Therapeutics, co-founded by Dr. David M. Epstein and Dr. Elizabeth Buck, is a precision oncology company. The company has pioneered the discovery of tumor-agnostic small-molecule therapies. Its proprietary Mutation-Allostery-Pharmacology (MAP) platform is designed to enable the company to analyze population-level genomic sequencing data to identify oncogenic mutations that drive multiple tumor types, group these mutational drivers together, and develop a single small-molecule therapy targeted at specific groups of mutations.

The MAP platform has generated a series of potent, selective small-molecule kinase inhibitors targeting a range of driver mutations in cancer. Its two initially announced programs primarily focus on EGFR and HER2 mutant subsets.

Wellington Management Company, founded in 1928 and headquartered in Massachusetts, USA, operates as an independent investment management firm. The company provides services to investment companies, pooled investment vehicles, corporations, state or municipal government entities, endowments, foundations, healthcare organizations, religious institutions, and trusts. It also manages a range of equity, fixed-income, and balanced mutual funds for its clients. The firm invests in global public equity, fixed income, and alternative markets.

BVF Partners LP is a San Francisco-based private investment partnership that focuses on investing in the public biotechnology sector and fundamentally driving its development. Since its inception in 1993, BVF has been committed to establishing concentrated, long-term investments in small biotechnology companies, while subjecting its investments to rigorous, diligent, and ongoing monitoring. BVF is dedicated to collaborating with its portfolio companies to achieve mutual success.

Deerfield Management is an investment advisory firm headquartered in Illinois, founded in 1993, primarily managing collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and hedge funds. The company mainly invests in government securities, investment-grade bonds, asset-backed securities, and bank loan portfolios, with over $8 billion in assets under management.

(Compiled by Wang Fang)