The antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) craze shows no signs of slowing down any time soon, judging by Tubulis’ latest financing.
The German biotech raked in 128 million euros ($138.8 million) in an upsized series B2 financing, which will be used to work towards entering clinical trials. At the front of Tubulis’ mind are two lead ADC candidates: TUB-040 and TUB-030.
TUB-040 focuses on the tumor-antigen Napi2b, a well-known area of interest for ovarian and lung cancer that is also the target of Mersana and GSK’s ADC UpRi. UpRi was released in November 2023 from a clinical hold implemented by the FDA related to a patient death.
Tubulis’ other lead ADC is TUB-030, which targets the protein 5T4, an antigen often overexpressed in solid tumors. Gilead signed a $300 million upfront pact with Dragonfly Therapeutics in 2022 centered on the biotech’s immunotherapy program targeting the same protein.
Tubulis is preparing to present preclinical proof-of-concept data for the two ADCs at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) next month. Money from today’s funding round will be used to launch one of these candidates into a phase 1/2a clinical trial this year.
But the significant sum accrued means the biotech can go further than that, increasing the company’s presence in the U.S. via a new subsidiary as well as expanding its “suite of technology platforms to unlock novel payloads for the development of versatile and customizable ADCs.”
The funding round was led by EQT Life Sciences and Nextech Invest, joined by U.S.-based funds Frazier Life Sciences and Deep Track Capital. All existing investors from Tubulis’ $63 million series B round in 2022 also returned, namely Andera Partners, BioMedPartners, Fund+, Bayern Kapital, Evotec, coparion, Seventure Partners, OCCIDENT and High-Tech Gründerfonds.
“This substantial financing from a syndicate of global specialist biotech investors recognizes Tubulis’ unique position in the ADC space,” CEO Dominik Schumacher, Ph.D., said in the release. “Our goal is to establish Tubulis as a global ADC leader as we transition into a clinical-stage company and harness the full power of ADCs to bring their therapeutic value to patients with solid tumors.”
Tubulis has talked up the potential for the combination of its Tubutecan payloads and P5 conjugation platform to reduce toxicity to stand out in the competitive ADC space. By minimizing premature loss of payload and stopping aggregation in circulation, Tubulis thinks it can limit target-independent toxicity and make better ADCs.
The investors aren’t the only ones to have spied potential in Tubulis’ ADC ambitions. A year ago, Bristol Myers Squibb paid $22.8 million upfront to the Munich-based biotech to gain exclusive access to Tubulis’ technology for “a selected number of highly differentiated ADCs to treat solid tumors.”
Once BMS selected antibody targets, the plan was for Tubulis to provide its linker-payload to create an ADC and then leave the Big Pharma partner to handle development, manufacturing and commercialization.
BMS returned to the ADC gold rush toward the end of last year, paying China’s SystImmune $800 million and Orum Therapeutics $100 million.