US-based biotechnology company Halda Therapeutics has secured $126m financing in a Series B extension round, which brings Halda’s total investment to $202m.
New investors, including Deep Track Capital, Frazier Life Sciences, RA Capital Management, Vida Ventures, Boxer Capital and Taiho Ventures, participated in the financing.
Existing investors include Canaan Partners, Access Biotechnology, Elm Street Ventures, and Connecticut Innovations.
Halda is a biotech company engaged in developing a new class of cancer therapies, dubbed RIPTAC (Regulated Induced Proximity TArgeting Chimeras) therapeutics.
The company intends to use the proceeds from the financing to advance two RIPTAC candidates into clinical trials for patients with prostate cancer and breast cancer.
Halda will initially invest in therapeutics against metastatic cancers, where drug resistance to standard of care is prevalent.
As part of the financing, Deep Track Capital principal Rebecca Luse, Frazier Life Sciences principal Joe Cabral, RA Capital Management managing director Nandita Shangari and Vida Ventures co-founder and managing director Arjun Goyal will be appointed to the Halda Board.
Halda Therapeutics chief scientific officer Kat Kayser-Bricker said: “We are excited to have the support of this leading group of new healthcare investors who share our vision to be a cancer drug innovator.
“This financing will enable us to bring to patients our oral, selective, and widely applicable cancer cell-killing mechanism that is designed to overcome drug resistance, which is a major shortcoming of many current standard-of-care cancer treatments.
“Our team of talented scientists has made tremendous progress, from inventing the RIPTAC modality to translating our platform into two promising programs in prostate cancer and breast cancer, with our first drug candidate entering the clinic in the first half of 2025 for mCRPC patients.”
Halda aims to begin a Phase 1 study of its lead RIPTAC therapeutic, HLD-0915, in patients with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), in the first half of 2025.
The biotech company will use the financing to support the clinical development of its second RIPTAC therapeutic for metastatic breast cancer.
In addition, the company will use the funding to further build its team and develop additional products, using its RIPTAC platform, to address other indications with unmet needs.
Halda designed its RIPTAC modality as a heterobifunctional molecule that targets two proteins for a novel cancer cell-killing mechanism to address a specific cancer type.
The new therapeutics work by a novel ‘hold and kill’ mechanism, which brings together two proteins, a cancer-specific protein and a protein with an essential function.
