BlossomHill Therapeutics – a biotechnology company focused on designing and developing small molecule medicines for treating cancer and autoimmune diseases – announced the closing of a $100 million Series B financing round. The funding was led by Colt Ventures with participation from new and existing investors, including Cormorant Asset Management, OrbiMed, Vivo Capital, Hercules BioVentures Partners LLC, Plaisance Capital Management LLC, and H&D Asset Management, and others.
In connection with the financing round, Sundeep Agrawal, M.D., General Partner at Colt Ventures, and Timothy Stubbs, M.D., Principal at Vivo Capital, will join the BlossomHill Board of Directors.
This funding brings the total capital raised by the company to $173 million. And BlossomHill will use the funding to advance its pipeline of multiple in-house discovery and development programs for multiple high-need cancers and autoimmune diseases into the clinic.
BlossomHill is a drug design company that is redefining precision medicine to make a leap forward in life expectancy and quality of life for patients, creating novel chemical entities that seek to address on- and off-target resistance mechanisms. And combining human intelligence, creative thinking, and proven drug design expertise, the company is developing small molecules with the potential to redefine the gold standard for cancer and autoimmune disease treatment.
BlossomHill was co-founded in June 2020 by renowned drug designer and chemist Dr. Jean Cui – who is responsible for the design of the FDA-approved drugs crizotinib (XALKORI), lorlatinib (LOBRENA) and repotrectinib (AUGTYRO) and biotech business veteran, Y. Peter Li, Ph.D., M.B.A.; Dr. Cui and Dr. Li were also the co-founders of Turning Point Therapeutics, which Bristol Myers Squibb acquired in June 2022.
KEY QUOTES:
“We appreciate the strong support from our new and existing investors in this round of financing. This will be a pivotal year for BlossomHill as we move our first two oncology programs into phase 1 clinical trials, advance several programs forward to IND enabling studies, and continue to build our already very deep pipeline of oncology and autoimmune discovery programs.”
– J. Jean Cui, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of BlossomHill Therapeutics
“It is a privilege to partner with Dr. Jean Cui and her team at BlossomHill. We have been highly impressed with her drug design capabilities and the innovative pipeline she has built. Jean has an outstanding track record of designing three FDA-approved cancer drugs, and we look forward to supporting the company’s next phase of development.”
– Sundeep Agrawal, M.D., General Partner at Colt Ventures
“We are excited to continue to support BlossomHill Therapeutics’ creative, trailblazing drug development team in its mission of bringing potentially best-in-class drug treatment to meaningfully improve patient lives.”
– Bihua Chen, Founder of Cormorant Asset Management
“Since its founding, the company has made rapid progress on its drug discovery programs, and we look forward to the generation of clinical data as BlossomHill enters its next phase.”
– Carl Gordon, Ph.D., Managing Partner, OrbiMed Advisors
