LifeMine Therapeutics has secured $263 million in financing to accelerate the clinical development of LIFE-001 and advance its broader pipeline of transplantation and immunology therapies. The financing includes an oversubscribed $188 million Series E round led by Milky Way Investments. New investors included Bezos Expeditions, Gates Frontier and RA Capital Management, while GV, LoLa Capital Partners, GlaxoSmithKline, Invus and ARCH Venture Partners continued their support.
The Series E follows a previously completed $75 million Series D financing, bringing the total amount of newly raised capital to $263 million.
LifeMine plans to use the proceeds to advance LIFE-001, including a planned Phase 2 kidney transplant study and a Phase 1b islet cell transplant study.
LIFE-001 is a long-acting injectable calcineurin activation inhibitor being developed to prevent organ transplant rejection. The therapy is designed to avoid the immunophilin-dependent organ damage associated with existing calcineurin inhibitors such as cyclosporin, voclosporin and tacrolimus.
In an ongoing Phase 1 single- and multiple-ascending-dose study involving more than 120 adults, LifeMine said LIFE-001 has not produced clinically meaningful renal, metabolic or cardiovascular safety signals to date.
Existing calcineurin inhibitors are widely used to prevent organ rejection but can create substantial toxicities because transplant recipients frequently remain on the therapies for life.
LifeMine designed LIFE-001 to bind directly to calcineurin and prevent T-cell activation without relying on intermediary immunophilin proteins.
The financing will also support the broader application of LifeMine’s Top-Down Drug Discovery platform, which uses genomic information from fungi to identify potential medicines with new mechanisms of action.
The platform combines human genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, machine learning and synthetic biology.
LifeMine has raised approximately $558 million to date.
The company also appointed Yves Zinggeler as Chief Commercial Officer. He previously served as Vice President and General Manager of Vertex’s U.S. Cystic Fibrosis Business Unit and has participated in 14 product launches and more than a dozen label expansions.
KEY QUOTES:
“As the first proof point of our discovery engine, LIFE-001 is designed to overcome the limitations of legacy calcineurin inhibitors through the direct inhibition of calcineurin activation without relying on intermediary immunophilin proteins.”
“With this financing and the support of an outstanding syndicate of investors, we are well positioned to rapidly advance LIFE-001 through the next phase of clinical development.”
Gregory Verdine, Ph.D., Co-Founder, President and CEO of LifeMine Therapeutics
“A next-generation calcineurin activation inhibitor capable of maintaining efficacy while significantly reducing multiorgan toxicity would represent one of the most meaningful advances in transplantation in decades.”
Andrew Cameron, M.D., Surgeon-in-Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital
