PhoreMost Completes Series B Financing to Expand Oncology Drug Development Pipeline

On June 24, 2019, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that biotechnology company PhoreMost announced the completion of its Series B financing round and unveiled a new business plan. The investing institutions and the amount raised in this round were not disclosed.

PhoreMost was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with Ashok Venkitaraman as its founder. PhoreMost is a novel drug development company dedicated to pioneering new “druggable” target areas and collaborating with academic institutions and industrial companies worldwide. Its goal is to bring a range of innovative targeted therapies to market more effectively and reduce costs for patients.

Following the completion of its Series B financing, PhoreMost will undergo a transformation and enter an expansion phase. Post-transformation, the company may establish a revolutionary drug discovery and development business.

Alongside its Series B financing round, PhoreMost has also entered into a collaboration with Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. Chris Torrance, CEO of PhoreMost, disclosed the company’s development plans to foreign media. Torrance stated that the Series B funding will help advance the innovation of biomedical technologies, including new spin-off initiatives focused on neurodegenerative diseases, healthy aging pathways, rare diseases, and other oncology R&D programs.

Currently, PhoreMost is collaborating with Vernalis, a subsidiary of Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, to investigate an undisclosed oncology target. PhoreMost employs its next-generation SITESEEKER® phenotypic screening technology to identify and validate the oncology target. Leveraging its Vernalis design platform, Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated is developing small-molecule inhibitors against the oncology target, rapidly advancing lead compounds into the optimization phase.

Torrance stated that the collaboration with Vernalis is exciting, but it is merely the opening act of a major biotechnology partnership unfolding at the Babraham Research Campus.

Building on its $15 million Series A financing round in 2018, PhoreMost is currently establishing a portfolio of drug development projects and collaborating with pharmaceutical companies to help them build their drug pipelines.

“PhoreMost is currently implementing further expansion plans, with a Series B+ financing round scheduled for the end of the year. At that time, additional subsidiaries will be established to help the company enter more medical fields,” said Torrance. “PhoreMost is committed to collaborating with academia and small and medium-sized enterprises, leveraging Vernalis’s specialized medicinal chemistry capabilities to develop more novel drugs and effectively advance them into clinical therapy.” Currently, PhoreMost has over 25 partners worldwide, covering nearly all stages of drug discovery.

Vernalis is a revenue-generating, development-stage pharmaceutical company based in the United Kingdom, founded in 1988. As one of the UK’s leading development-stage pharmaceutical companies, Vernalis brings promising products to market. To date, Vernalis has acquired three companies, with its most recent acquisition completed on November 17, 2005, when it purchased Cita NeuroPharmaceuticals for $64.5 million.

Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in the Greater San Diego area of the United States. This biotechnology company is dedicated to developing technologies for pharmaceutical companies’ drug research and development. Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated creates value for shareholders by offering a diversified portfolio of biotechnology and pharmaceutical products. The company collaborates with other pharmaceutical firms, leveraging their expertise in late-stage development, regulatory management, and commercialization to generate revenue.

(Compiled by Cheng Tao)