December 30, 2014
By Krystle Vermes, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
California-based biopharmaceutical company 3-V Biosciences has announced the closing of its Series D funding round, totaling $28.5 million. The round was led by NEA, Kleiner Perkins and Rock Springs Capital Management. New investors including Ally Bridge Group also participated in the financing series.
The money raised during this financing round will go toward clinical trials that look at monotherapy in combination with cytoxic agents through phase IB expansion cohorts. The company primarily focuses on discovering and developing therapeutics that modulate pathways in oncology and infectious diseases.
“All of us involved with 3-V are thankful and excited to be supported by a truly top-tier syndicate of investors,” said Merdad Parsey, chief executive officer of 3-V Biosciences. “As a company, we are at a key inflection point in our growth trajectory as our novel oncology target (FASN), that has been historically so difficult to target, is now on the cusp of producing clinically meaningful data.”
The Debut of TVB-2640
On Nov. 19, 3-V Biosciences presented the first human clinical data for its lead oncology candidate, TVB-2640, at the EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Barcelona, Spain. The data came from its ongoing phase 1 clinical trial of the drug.
“The first-in-class fatty acid synthase inhibitor is a highly promising target that is specific to cancer cell survival and correlates to increasing disease severity and poor outcome in a number of tumor types,” said Jeffrey Infante, principal investigator for the trial. “The preliminary results we have seen from this TVB-2640 Phase 1 trial have demonstrated favorable safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics. In addition, well-tolerated doses that exceed those predicted to be efficacious have been achieved. We look forward to analyzing additional data from this ongoing trial and the opportunity to observe indications of efficacy of TVB-2640 against a variety of solid tumor types.”
TVB-2640 is a FASN, or fatty acid synthase inhibitor, may impact tumor metabolism, lipid signaling and tumor cell survival. It is the first FASN inhibitor to enter clinical trials involving humans.
“The first look at these data is a major milestone for TVB-2640 and 3-V and we are gratified to see initial positive clinical feedback,” said Parsey. “With favorable pharmacokinetics supporting once-daily oral dosing and these clinical findings support our belief that TVB-2640 could be an important new development in the treatment of cancer as a monotherapy and combination therapy. As we approach dose selection for Phase 2 and initiate expansion cohorts, we expect to see early efficacy data from this TVB-2640 Phase 1 program in 2015.”
