Aslan Pharma raises US$34m in fresh funding
Singapore
THE Republic's fledgling pharma ecosystem on Monday got a shot in the arm as biotech startup Aslan Pharmaceuticals announced it has raised US$34 million in Series C funding led by Accuron Technologies, a tech subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.
The proceeds, said Aslan, will be used to further accelerate clinical development of its pipeline of four novel therapeutic agents, all of which have the potential to treat tumour types "prevalent in Asia", such as gastric, bile duct and breast cancers.
"This marks a high, unmet medical need in the region. Bile duct cancer is most prevalent in Asia - while rare in the other parts of the world - and there is currently no effective treatment for this disease. Gastric cancer is one of the most prevalent here and current prognosis tends to be poor," chief executive Carl Firth told BT.
Singapore provides a strong supportive environment - including sound scientific and clinical infrastructure - for biotech ventures, he said. "Access to patient populations that are representative of the region and ease of collaboration with investigators in the industry have been beneficial for clinical development undertaken by Asia-focused companies."
Developing such drugs in the West, on the contrary, can be challenging given the lower prevalence of such tumour types there, Dr Firth added. Aslan has since sealed pre-clinical and clinical partnerships with the National Cancer Centre Singapore and other "high-quality" clinical centres here.
Abel Ang, CEO of Accuron Med-Tech, the medical device and diagnostics group of Accuron Technologies, said: "Aslan is exemplary of a Singapore-based biomedical company demonstrating world-class clinical capabilities. We support the company in executing its innovative development strategy and achieving commercial success in the region and beyond."
Other new investors in Aslan's Series C round include Tianda Pharmaceuticals and Haitong International. Existing investors Morningside, Bioveda, Cenova and Sagamore Bioventures also participated in the round.
Aslan was founded in 2010. It raised US$12 million in Series A in 2011, and another US$22 million in Series B in 2013, taking total funding to-date to some US$69 million.
Last month, a white paper on Singapore's biosciences sector revealed it to account for S$30 billion in manufacturing output today. It also called for the speeding up of commercialisation in biotech here, which continues to lag behind that of Israel, Taiwan and South Korea.
Titled The Next Lap: Biosciences in Singapore 2025, and prepared by healthcare research consultancy Clearstate and life sciences industry association BioSingapore, the paper recommended more capital, more private-public collaboration, and more sector-specific incubators and accelerators, to grow the industry here.
Notably, MerLion Pharmaceuticals' antibiotic Finafloxacin, which is used to treat ear infections, this year became the first "Made in Singapore" drug to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
