BOSTON & HANGZHOU, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ranok Therapeutics (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., an emerging biopharmaceutical company focused on developing breakthrough therapies for cancer and other serious diseases, today announced it had secured a $40 million Series B funding round denominated in both U.S. dollars and Chinese yuan. The financing was led by Lapam Capital and Shanghai Healthcare Capital, with additional participation from Wu Capital, Zhongguancun Kaiyuan Capital and existing investors, and representatives of the new investors will join Ranok’s expanded board of directors. To date, Ranok has raised the equivalent of over $50 million in funding.
Ranok has developed a proprietary and innovative targeted protein degradation (TPD) platform technology, CHAMP (Chaperone-mediated Protein Degradation), that leverages Ranok’s founders’ expertise in protein homeostasis to take advantage of the cellular chaperome network, potentially improving drug safety and efficacy due to selective targeting of disease tissues.
“We are delighted by the enthusiastic response from investors to this financing, which is a strong endorsement of Ranok’s strategic vision and research programs,” said Weiwen Ying, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ranok Therapeutics. “These funds will enable us to advance our first cancer therapy into clinical trials in the near future and continue to progress our pipeline of novel CHAMP targeted protein degraders. We believe our approach may provide important benefits both in safety and in efficacy for areas of significant unmet need. We welcome our new investors and greatly appreciate the continued support of our existing investors.”
“We are very optimistic about the direction and opportunity of the emerging field of TPD and its application to traditionally undruggable disease targets. Ranok’s founders, who bring decades of experience in protein degradation, have developed a unique technology platform that is highly differentiated from competing degrader approaches. We are delighted to work with innovative companies such as Ranok and look forward to helping quickly and efficiently bring their novel medicines to patients,” said Zhihua Yu, Chairman of Lapam Capital.
“TPD is an exciting new paradigm in drug development, and Ranok’s CHAMP technology has unique advantages in comparison to other protein degrader approaches, such as PROTAC,” said Hong Wen, Ph.D., Partner at Shanghai Healthcare Capital. “We share Ranok’s vision to become a leading protein degradation therapy company with a global impact by creating breakthrough medicines for patients suffering from cancer and other diseases.”
The Series B financing proceeds will support continued development of Ranok’s most advanced cancer program, which is expected to be announced by the end of 2021, as well as expansion of its preclinical pipeline of novel therapies based on the proprietary CHAMP technology platform.
About Ranok Therapeutics
Ranok is a privately held, emerging biopharmaceutical company that is pioneering its proprietary CHAMP platform technology, an innovative approach to targeted protein degradation (TPD) for the discovery and development of novel therapeutics. Ranok was founded by a leadership team composed of industry veterans from both Chinese and American biotech and pharmaceutical companies and is based in two of the world’s leading centers of innovation and medical research: Hangzhou China and Greater Boston Massachusetts USA. By bringing together cutting-edge medical research from both China and the United States, Ranok’s goal is to create transformative medicines to benefit patients suffering from cancer and other serious diseases around the world. For more information, please visit the company website at www.ranoktherapeutics.com or follow us at LinkedIn and on Twitter @RanokTx.
About Ranok’s CHAMP platform
Chaperone-mediated Protein Degradation/Degrader (CHAMP) technology is based on our founders’ extensive backgrounds in protein homeostasis research. This technology takes advantage of the cellular chaperome network, distinguishing it from other targeted protein degradation (TPD) approaches such as PROTAC. CHAMP has a number of unique advantages, including improved safety due to the selective targeting of tumors. Our proprietary R&D engine combines deep biological insight and chemistry expertise to iteratively discover and test new leads, rapidly identifying and advancing optimal development candidates for a variety of important disease targets.
