Amberstone Biosciences Emerges with $12 Million for Solid Tumor Therapies

With $12 million in hand from a Series A investment round, California-based Amberstone Biosciences is taking aim at cancer with its highly-differentiated tumor microenvironment activated therapeutic programs that include bispecific antibodies and immunocytokines.

The company, founded in 2018, is planning a pipeline aimed at solid tumors. Its AmberFlow microfluidics-based drug discovery engine bolsters its programs. According to the company, AmberFlow enables them to “unlock the power of single-cell function analysis in a tunable microenvironment.” This allows for isolating rare, high-quality, and well-characterized antibody drug candidates.

George Wu, president and chief executive officer of Amberstone, said its unique Tumor Microenvironment Activated Therapeutics (T-MATE) programs enable the development of oncology treatments that they believe will be safer and more effective.

While the California-based company does not have any pipeline assets currently listed on its website, Amberstone said its work focuses on challenging targets that require a “unique mode-of-action and/or particular functional property” that current oncology approaches cannot address.

Funding for the Series A financing round was led by Viva BioInnovator, Co-win Ventures and Sinovation Ventures. The funding was also supported by ChangRong Capital, Lifespan Investments, and existing shareholders. The company plans to use the finances to bring its developmental programs into clinical studies.

“We are tremendously grateful for the strong support from our new and existing investors. The funding and broad expertise and resources in the field provided by our investors will take us another step closer to our mission,” Wu said in a statement.

Dr. Xin Huang, a managing partner of Co-win Ventures, noted that there are currently significant challenges in oncology, particularly in the areas of T-cell immunotherapy. Huang said this approach has encountered significant obstacles in the “complex microenvironment” of solid tumors.

“The T-MATE molecules discovered through Amberstone’s world-leading cross-disciplinary drug discovery engine will break through the bottleneck of traditional methods and bring new hope to the treatment of solid tumors,” Huang said in a statement. He added that Co-win is excited to explore next-generation approaches to immuno-oncology with Amberstone.

Dr. Han Dai, chief innovation officer of Viva Biotech and head of Viva BioInnovator, said Amberstone’s T-MATE therapeutic molecules could create a “real breakthrough” in immuno-oncology. Dai said Viva BioInnovator had been impressed with the scientific prowess of Amberstone’s leadership team.

Amberstone wasn’t the only Series A announced in recent weeks. Before the holidays, Netherlands-based Synerkine Pharma B.V., developing a new class of powerful cytokine fusion proteins, added €3.5 million (nearly $4 million) to its Series A funding.