Onena Medicines closes 3.7M CHF funding round to advance its novel antibody portfolio

The funding round consisted of private investments from Avanteca Partners and the Zürcher Kantonalbank into Onena, a BaseLaunch portfolio company. Onena was also awarded a competitive Torres Quevedo grant from the CDTI in Spain to enhance their antibody platform technologies.

Onena’s flagship DSIP program (OMED-1) is a first-in-class humanized LEFTY neutralizing antibody that has shown efficacy in breast, colorectal and glioblastoma preclinical models in vivo. By leveraging their deep learning pipelines to humanize and optimize the binding affinity of their lead molecules, Onena will select a development candidate for the OMED-1 program.

In addition, Eureka awarded an Onena-led consortium a 1.7M euro Eurostars grant designed to advance Onena´s OMED-1 program through early preclinical studies. Onena joined fellow awardees Crown Bioscience, Hawk Biosystems, and Charles Dumontet at the Universite Claude Bernard Lyon with the shared goal of strengthening the OMED-1 program´s biomarker strategy and exploring combinations with standard-of-care drugs.

Onena´s second most advanced DSIP program (OMED-2) is a first-in-class fully human antibody that targets an undisclosed DSIP target protein that the company believes has potential to affect solid tumors such as melanoma. The current funding will bring lead candidate molecules for the OMED-2 program through in vivo proof-of-concept, setting a new benchmark for in silico designed complex biologics.

"We are thrilled to be backed by Avanteca Partners and the Zürcher Kantonalbank as we build Onena Medicines’ first-in-class pipeline of anti-DSIP antibody therapies. Our partners realize, as we do, the incredible opportunity that lies before us to lead the AI drug discovery field.," said Neethan Lobo, the CEO and Co-Founder of Onena Medicines.

(Press release / SK)