NEW YORK – Anticancer Bioscience (ACB) on Monday said it has raised ¥63 million ($10 million) in a financing round led by undisclosed angel investors and plans to use the funds to advance its synthetic lethality programs, including drugs targeting MYC overexpression.
ACB, a Chengdu, China-based company that uses proprietary screening libraries and discovery platforms to develop new ways to induce cancer cell death while sparing healthy tissue, anticipates the funds will allow it to take two compounds into investigational new drug (IND) application-enabling studies this year.
Specifically, the firm's MYC inhibiting "HJ" compound has demonstrated in vitro an ability to mimic Aurora B kinase, effectively resulting in synthetic lethality among cancer cells that overexpress MYC. ACB anticipates filing an IND for this compound in Q4 of 2021.
Beyond the MYC-focused, oncogene-enabled synthetic lethality program, ACB also has a tumor suppressor synthetic lethality program, a polyploid cell synthetic lethality program, a centrosome amplification or declustering therapy, and a restoration of contact inhibition program.
"With the additional financing, we are well placed to accelerate our synthetic lethal approach and to maximize the value of our libraries and pipeline," ACB's Founder and President Dun Yang said in a statement.
The additional financing comes on the heels of an earlier seed financing round in which ACB raised ¥68.75 million.