AnHeart Therapeutics completed 100 million Chinese Yuan Series A round of financing; new anti-cancer drugs to enter China’s clinical trials
May 15, 2019
On May 15, 2019, AnHeart Therapeutics (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as AnHeart) announced the completion of the series A round of financing raising about 100 million Chinese yuan. The financing was exclusively provided by Decheng Capital, an internationally known venture capital institution specializing in the biomedical industry. This round of financing will be used to establish the AnHeart team to carry out Phase 2 clinical trials of its leading asset AB-106 and to further enrich the company’s product pipeline.
AnHeart is a clinical stage company, specialized in acquisition, development and commercializing innovative drugs that improve human health and quality of life. Its leading asset is AB-106, an oral, highly selective ROS1/NTRK small molecule inhibitor. This new anticancer drug was acquired from Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. in December 2018.
Early clinical trials have shown that AB-106 had satisfactory safety and efficacy and exhibits long progression-free survival in patients with non-small cell lung cancer with ROS1 fusion mutations. Currently, AB-106 has completed phase 1 clinical trials in the United States and Japan for the treatment of patients with solid tumors and neuroendocrine tumors containing ROS1 or NTRK fusion genes. The latest Phase 1 clinical trial results are expected to be reported in detail at the China Clinical Oncology Association Annual Meeting (CSCO) in September 2019.
“AnHeart is committed to the development of innovative drugs with unmet clinical needs,” said Dr. Wang Yuyuan, co-founder and CEO of AnHeart. “With the strong support from Decheng Capital, we successfully acquired worldwide global rights for AB-106 from Japan Daiichi Sankyo and took over the long-term follow-up of the product in the US IND and Phase 1 clinical trials.” Strategic collaborations are one of the strategies of Anheart. The company plans to establish and enhance clinically innovative product pipelines with near key value inflection points by working with large and medium-sized biopharmaceutical companies.”
Dr. Yan Bing, Co-Founder and CMO of Anheart added: “Our team has very rich clinical development experience, and successful drug approval experience in Asia Pacific, Europe and America. We also have long term collaboration with top industry leaders as well. In fact, leveraging our global clinical development capabilities and interdisciplinary expert networks to optimize the clinical commercial value of assets is another strategy of AnHeart.”
“Besides acquiring clinical assets by cooperation with large and medium-sized biopharmaceutical projects, we also consider introducing and developing assets that have not entered the clinical phase but have demonstrated good potential in animal experiments in order to build and consolidate an innovative product pipeline”, Dr. Zheng Lihua, Co-Founder and CBO of AnHeart added.
“We are very glad we have the opportunity to support Anheart”, said Dr. Cui Xiangmin, Managing Partner of Decheng Capital. ”AnHeart has built a very successful clinical development team. We believe that AnHeart can use its strength in clinical development to bring a variety of innovative drugs to the market to meet the clinical needs of patients.”
