SOUTHLAKE, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OncoNano Medicine, Inc. today announced the raise of an approximate $50 million Series B financing led by the healthcare investment team at Advantech Capital, a China-based cross border institutional investment fund. Proceeds of the financing will be used, in part, to support the Phase 3 clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe for pegsitacianine, an innovative real-time imaging agent used in intraoperative surgical resection of solid tumors, and accelerate the advancement of the company’s first therapeutic development program, ONM-501, a novel immune-therapeutic formulated with the company’s core delivery technology.
“We are thrilled to welcome Advantech as an investor in OncoNano and look forward to continuing the momentum we’ve built with our lead development programs that utilize our proprietary pH-activated micelle platform,” said Martin Driscoll, CEO at OncoNano Medicine, Inc. “We plan to initiate our pegsitacianine pivotal trial program in the U.S. and Europe and submit an IND for our first therapeutic development program in 2022. The funds from this Series B raise combined with the support of our partners from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) provide the resources to operate our company for several years, advance pegsitacianine further towards commercialization, and progress our novel immuno-oncology compound, ONM-501, through our Phase 1a/1b clinical program. With the inclusion of the new capital, we now have the capability to accelerate our development programs and work to achieve our goal of bringing novel interventions and treatments to cancer patients.”
“We are impressed with the potential for OncoNano’s innovative core technology,” said Benjamin Qiu, partner at Advantech Capital. “We see great promise in OncoNano and are excited to support the company through its further advancement of pegsitacianine into a pivotal clinical development program and its novel dual-activation STING agonist towards a first in human study to help address the persistent and challenging unmet needs in cancer surgery and treatment.”
About Advantech Capital
Advantech Capital is a private equity investment fund, focusing on innovation-driven growth opportunities in China, mainly investing in TMT, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.
About Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT)
CPRIT has awarded $2.72 billion in grants to Texas research institutions and organizations through its academic research, prevention, and product development research programs. CPRIT has recruited 233 distinguished researchers, supported the establishment, expansion, or relocation of 42 companies to Texas, and generated more than $5.5 billion in additional public and private investment. CPRIT funding has advanced scientific and clinical knowledge and provided 7.1 million life-saving cancer prevention and early detection services reaching Texans from all 254 counties. On November 5, 2019, Texas voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment providing an additional $3 billion to CPRIT, for a total $6 billion investment in cancer research and prevention efforts across Texas, one of the largest state funded research programs in United States history and the second largest source of funding for cancer research in the world.
About OncoNano Medicine
OncoNano Medicine is developing a new class of products that exploit pH as a biomarker to diagnose and treat cancer with high specificity. Our product candidates and interventions are designed to help patients across the continuum of cancer care and include solid tumor therapeutics, agents for real-time image-guided surgery and a platform of product candidates that activate and guide the body’s immune system to target cancer.
OncoNano’s lead development candidate is pegsitacianine, a novel fluorescent nanoprobe, that is currently under study in Phase 2 clinical trials as a real-time surgical imaging agent for use in multiple cancer surgeries. ONM-501, OncoNano’s second development program, is a next generation STING (STimulator of INterferon Genes) agonist that is advancing towards a first in human trial in the second half of 2022. Learn more at www.OncoNano.com.
