Lycia Therapeutics announced that it has completed an oversubscribed $75 million Series D financing. The financing was co-led by existing investor Janus Henderson Investors and new investor Balyasny Asset Management. The round also included new participation from Adage Capital Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, and OrbiMed, along with continued support from Eli Lilly and Company, Franklin Templeton, Invus, RTW Investments, and Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners.
The company also announced the appointment of Amy Bachrodt as chief financial officer and the promotion of Karen Flick to general counsel.
Lycia is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing therapeutics designed to degrade disease-causing extracellular proteins, with an initial focus on autoimmune, inflammatory, and allergic diseases.
Lycia plans to use the proceeds to support clinical development of its lead programs.
These include LCA-0061, a cataLYTAC degrader designed to deplete immunoglobulin E for food allergy and other allergic diseases, and LCA-0321, a LYTAC degrader designed to selectively deplete thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor autoantibodies for Graves’ disease.
The funding will also support advancement of Lycia’s broader pipeline of cataLYTAC degraders toward the clinic.
Lycia’s proprietary LYTAC platform is designed to generate cataLYTAC degraders for repeated catalytic elimination of disease-causing proteins.
The financing comes as Lycia advances its two lead assets toward early clinical proof-of-concept following promising preclinical data.
Bachrodt joins Lycia as CFO with more than 18 years of finance leadership experience across private and public biotechnology companies.
She previously served as senior vice president of finance at Maze Therapeutics, where she helped lead the company’s 2025 initial public offering and worked with the executive team to raise more than $1 billion across venture, crossover, IPO, debt, and public market transactions.
Before Maze, Bachrodt held senior finance roles at Myovant Sciences and spent 10 years at Genentech.
Flick has been promoted from senior vice president of legal to general counsel. She joined Lycia in 2025 and brings nearly 25 years of legal experience across intellectual property strategy, corporate law, complex contracting, and governance.
Before Lycia, Flick served as general counsel at Allakos, VP legal at PACT Pharma, and held legal roles at Talis Biomedical.
Lycia is headquartered in South San Francisco and was established in collaboration with academic founder and Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and HHMI investigator at Stanford University.
KEY QUOTES:
“With this financing and strengthened leadership team now in place, we believe we are well-positioned to execute on our clinical programs while advancing the next generation of cataLYTAC degraders, with the near-term goal of demonstrating Phase 1 clinical proof-of-concept in patients. We look forward to demonstrating the potential of our degraders to redefine treatment for patients living with chronic autoimmune, inflammatory and allergic diseases.”
Aetna Wun Trombley, Ph.D., President and CEO of Lycia Therapeutics
“By driving selective depletion of disease-causing proteins, we believe Lycia’s degraders could represent a potentially best-in-class option to transform the care of patients suffering from immune-mediated conditions.”
Vish Sridharan, M.D., Assistant Portfolio Manager at Janus Henderson Investors
