Boundless Bio – a clinical-stage and next-generation precision oncology company developing innovative therapeutics directed against extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) for patients with oncogene amplified cancers – announced the closing of a $100 million Series C financing co-led by Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer AG, and RA Capital Management with participation from additional new investors, Sectoral Asset Management and Piper Heartland Healthcare Capital. Boundless Bio will use the financing to advance BBI-355, the first ecDNA-directed therapy (ecDTx), through meaningful clinical readouts from its ongoing Phase 1/2 clinical trial in patients with oncogene-amplified cancers.
Targeted therapies and immunotherapies have traditionally been largely ineffective in treating patients with oncogene-amplified cancers. And Boundless Bio is the first company wholly dedicated to developing novel therapeutics for patients with oncogene-amplified cancers, specifically those enabled by ecDNA. Absent in normal healthy tissue, ecDNA was observed in 14% of early-stage cancers and up to 40% of metastatic cancers and drive both oncogenesis as well as resistance to current therapeutic approaches. Boundless Bio is utilizing a unique understanding of the vulnerabilities of ecDNA biology with the aim to deliver potentially transformative therapies to the up to 400,000 patients newly diagnosed in the US each year with previously intractable oncogene amplified cancers.
The funding round raised will fund initial clinical development of BBI-355, as a single agent and in combination with select therapies, for multiple cancer indications with oncogene amplifications being evaluated in the ongoing Phase 1/2 POTENTIATE clinical trial (NCT05827614). BBI-355 is an orally available, potent, and selective CHK1 inhibitor, which has been shown preclinically to be synthetically lethal to ecDNA-bearing oncogene-amplified cancer cells. And the new funding round will also support the advancement of Boundless Bio’s preclinical pipeline of differentiated ecDTx candidates and its proprietary ecDNA diagnostic clinical trial assay, ECHO (ecDNA Harboring Oncogenes), which is being developed in partnership with SOPHiA GENETICS.
The Series C financing included participation from existing investors Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, ARCH Venture Partners, Nextech Invest, Wellington Management, Vertex Ventures HC, Redmile Group, Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company), GT Healthcare Capital Partners, Alexandria Venture Investments, PFM Health Sciences, Logos Capital, and City Hill Ventures. And in connecting with the funding, Fabio Pucci, Ph.D., Senior Director of Venture Investments Health at Leaps by Bayer, will join the Boundless Bio Board of Directors.
KEY QUOTES:
“At Leaps by Bayer, we invest in fundamental breakthroughs in healthcare. The ability to address oncogene-amplified cancers has remained one of the industry’s greatest challenges in the treatment of cancer. We are thrilled to support Boundless Bio, a company whose innovations have the potential to impact the lives of patients who currently have no effective standard of care.”
— Juergen Eckhardt, M.D., EVP and Head of Leaps by Bayer
“We are excited to have Leaps by Bayer join our world-class investor syndicate and to welcome Fabio Pucci to our Board of Directors. The support from new investors along with the continued commitment of our existing investors emphasizes our momentum and progress in bringing the first ecDNA-directed therapies to patients with oncogene-amplified cancers.”
— Zachary Hornby, President and Chief Executive Officer of Boundless Bio
