Hummingbird Bioscience raises US$125m in Series C round led by Novo Holdings
CLINICAL-STAGE biotech outfit Hummingbird Bioscience has raised US$125 million in a Series C round led by life science investor Novo Holdings, the startup announced on Tuesday.
New investors joining the round include EDBI, the corporate investment arm of Singapore's Economic Development Board; Frazier Healthcare Partners; Octagon Capital; AMGEN Ventures, DROIA Ventures; Morningside Ventures; Pureos Bioventures; Polaris Partners; Affinity Asset Advisors, Ally Bridge Group and Altrium Capital Management.
Hummingbird's existing investors SK Inc, Heritas Capital, and Mirae Asset Venture Capital also joined the round. Hummingbird had previously raised US$19 million in Series B funding in December 2019, followed by another US$6 million in a round extension in May last year.
"We have made tremendous progress since closing our Series B in 2019 and this financing reflects strong support for our platform, people, and development strategy," said Piers Ingram, chief executive and co-founder of Hummingbird.
Founded in 2015, Hummingbird specialises in a proprietary Rational Antibody Discovery (RAD) platform, which enables the startup to identify and "make very potent antibodies that other technologies have been unable to effectively hit", Mr Ingram had told The Business Times previously.
Funding from the latest round will be used to advance the clinical development of Hummingbird's lead antibody assets, which target cancer tumours. The startup will also further invest in the RAD platform and its pipeline of precision therapeutics.
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With its support for Hummingbird, EDBI aims to build up antibody engineering and process development activities in Singapore, said Chu Swee Yeok, chief executive and president of EDBI.
"Singapore's biotech ecosystem will continue to grow in significance on the global stage with the emergence of innovative homegrown biotech companies like Hummingbird making impressive progress towards developing next-generation therapies through global clinical trials, in challenging therapeutics areas such as cancer and autoimmune diseases," she said.
Kenneth Harrison, partner at Novo Ventures, an affiliate of Novo Holdings, said: "We believe that Hummingbird's novel data-driven, systems biology approach brings new precision to the field of antibody drug discovery and development, and we are proud to support the team in realising their vision."
Mr Harrison, Dan Estes, who is general partner of Frazier Healthcare Partners, and Kiel Kim, vice-president of SK Inc, will join Hummingbird's board of directors.
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