Zumutor Biologics bags $6.2 million funding led by Siana Capital

Zumutor Biologics, a biotechnology startup in the immuno-oncology space, has raised $6.2 million in fresh funding led by Siana Capital, as it looks to get to phase 1 clinical trials in the US for its lead antibody molecule for prostate cancer (ZM 008) by the middle of next year.

The latest round also saw participation from existing investors Accel and Bharat Innovation Fund, bringing the total capital raised by the Boston-headquartered firm so far to $27 million.

“We were supposed to take our lead asset into clinical trials last year, but that got pushed (due to the pandemic) and the regulatory environment also changed due to vaccine prioritisation,” said Kavitha Iyer Rodrigues, CEO of Zumutor Biologics.

“With this funding, we’re now going to go into investigative new drug finding in the beginning of next year and phase 1 clinical trials in the middle of next year,” she said, adding that the company is in a good position now with data from non-human trials looking promising.

Zumutor said that the completion of phase 1 trials will give it a lot of options in terms of strategic licensing of its lead asset, with a possibility of roping in biopharma companies to do phase 2-4 trials once the safety of the molecule is proven.

Typically biotech research and development firms such as Zumutor license their molecules to biopharma majors who would, once all phases of clinical trials are completed, launch the products either as a monotherapy or a combined therapy.

“We will continue to develop other assets in our pipeline, of which there are four, and we will take the asset from phase 1 into phase 2 and look for licensing partners, and at that point might also consider listing,” Rodrigues added.

Zumutor’s ZM008 is a first-in-class antibody molecule that it says activates the natural killer (NK) cells in a patient’s body to fight off the cancer cells. It has created these molecules through its proprietary antibody discovery platform, INABLR.

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