NEW YORK – Nuvalent on Tuesday announced the completion of a $135 million Series B financing round led by Bain Capital Life Sciences.
The company's founding investor, Deerfield Management, also participated in the round. New investors include Fidelity Management and Research Company, Wellington Management Company, Viking Global Investors, Janus Henderson Investors, Avoro Capital Advisors, Boxer Capital of Tavistock Group, Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners, Fairmount Funds Management, Driehaus Capital Management, and Logos Capital. Along with the financing, Andrew Hack, managing director of Bain Capital Life Sciences, will join the Nuvalent board of directors.
Nuvalent will use the funding to advance its two lead programs in non-small cell lung cancer: NVL-520, a ROS1-selective kinase inhibitor, and NVL-655 an ALK-selective kinase inhibitor. The financing will also support the firm's discovery research pipeline, which includes three undisclosed candidates.
Preclinical studies on NSCLC samples presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's virtual annual meeting last month showed that both NVL-520 and NVL-655 had activity against resistance mutations that emerged in tumors treated with earlier generation ROS and ALK inhibitors.
The company expects to begin a Phase I/II trial of NVL-520 in ROS1-positive NSCLC patients in the second half of 2021 and a Phase I/II trial of NUV-655 in ALK-positive NSCLC patients in the first half of 2022.
"With this financing, we are well positioned to efficiently advance our parallel lead programs into clinical development and to accelerate the discovery of additional novel, selective compounds to meet medical needs in treatment-resistant cancers," Nuvalent CFO Alex Balcom said in a statement.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm was founded in 2017. In January, Nuvalent raised $50 million in a Series A financing round.