Top 10 San Francisco Bay Area Biotechs by Venture Capital Funding
Earlier this year, Crunchbase, a database that tracks startup companies and their investors, noted that biotech venture funding has been increasing in recent years, with corporate venture investors significantly increasing their funding into biotechs in 2018. Recently, The San Francisco Business Times pulled together a list of the Bay Area’s top-funded biotech companies from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019. Here’s a look at the top 10.
#1. 23andMe. $300 million. 23andMe is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetics testing company. In addition to its hereditary testing, it offers some DTC testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 for breast and ovarian cancer. On July 16, 2018, the company partnered with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to offer free 23andMe Health + Ancestry kits to first-degree family members of the company’s customers with a TTR variant found in their Hereditary Amyloidosis (TTR-Related) Genetic Health Risk report. The disease is a genetic condition caused by a building up transthyretin (TTR) in the body, which can cause nerve, heart and other damage.
#2. BridgeBio Pharma. $229.20 million. BridgeBio Pharma is a biopharma company focused on developing therapies for inherited genetic diseases. On September 24, 2019, its subsidiary, QED Therapeutics, announced a collaboration with The Ivy Brain Tumor Center at Barrow Neurological Institute to investigate infigratinib to treat glioblastoma (GBM). Infigratinib is a FGFR1-3 tyrosine kinase inhibitor. GBM is an aggressive brain cancer.
#3. Ambys Medicines. $140 million. Ambys Medicines launched in August 2018 with $60 million Series A to develop drugs for serious liver diseases. The Series A was funded by Third Rock Ventures and Takeda Pharmaceutical. As part of the launch, the company also inked a strategic partnership with Takeda, which brought the total committed funds at the time of launch to $140 million.
#4. Atreca. $125 million. Atreca is an immuno-oncology company. It expects to launch an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for ATRC-101 by the end of 2019 and to start a Phase Ib trial in multiple solid tumor types in early 2020. The company went public on June 19, 2019, launching its initial public offering of 7,350,000 shares at a public price of $17 per share.
#5. Encoded Therapeutics. $104 million. Encoded Therapeutics came out of Illumina’s startup accelerator, who was also one of the company’s investors, along with Arch Venture Partners and Venrock. The $104 million raise in June 2019 brought the company’s total funding to $158 million. The company is a precision medicine firm focused on tests for a gene therapy for a rare type of epilepsy known as Dravet syndrome.
#6. Apollomics. $100 million. Apollomics is an oncology company with a particular focus on combination therapies. It has a pipeline of six development-stage assets including three monoclonal antibodies and three targeted therapies against uncontrolled growth signaling pathways. In April 2019, the company held a ribbon cutting ceremony at its new headquarters in Foster City, California. The company also has an office in Hangzhou, China.
#7. Revolution Medicines. $100 million. Revolution Medicines is an immuno-oncology company. On September 17, 2019, Revolution dosed the first patient in its Phase Ib/II dose escalation and dose-expansion trial of RMC-4530 in combination with Genentech’s Cotellic (cobimetinib) in relapsed/refractory solid tumors with specific genomic mutations. RMC-4630 is a SHP2 inhibitor. Cotellic is a MEK inhibitor.
#8. Berkeley Lights. $95 million. Berkeley Lights has a technology platform that automates the manipulation, analysis and selection of individual cells. On October 1, the company partnered with Ginkgo Bioworks in a $150 million, multi-year non-exclusive deal. Gingko will use Berkeley Lights’ optofluidic platform in its automated genetic engineering foundries.
#9. Harpoon Therapeutics. $92.62 million. Harpoon Therapeutics is an immuno-oncology company. It has a novel antibody-based drug discovery platform called TriTAC, which, it says, “offers a new way to unleash the target cell-killing properties of a patient’s own immune system.” In April 2019, the company dosed the first patient in its Phase I/IIa trial of HPN536 in ovarian cancer. HPN536 targets mesothelin, which is expressed on ovarian and pancreatic carcinoma, mesothelioma, non-small cell lung cancer and breast cancer.
#10. 4D Molecular Therapeutics. $90 million. 4D Molecular Therapeutics creates and develops optimized pharmaceutical-grade viral vectors to be used in gene therapies. On May 30, 2019, the company released new preclinical data with its novel vector, 4D-C102 for neuromuscular diseases and specifically for the product candidate incorporating 4D-C102 for Fabry Disease, 4D-310.