China-based biopharmaceutical firm IMPACT Therapeutics has completed its Series D+ funding round at 400 million yuan ($55.2 million) to advance its pipeline of anti-cancer therapeutics.
The Series D+ round was led by GTJA Investment Group, a healthcare-dedicated investment firm that manages over 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion), and Beijing-based state capital investor Kingray Capital.
Other investors include Yangzhou Guojin Group, a financial holding platform funded by the local government of Yangzhou City in eastern China. Existing shareholders Xiamen C&D Emerging Industry Equity Investment and Lilly Asia Ventures re-upped in the new deal.
IMPACT, which focuses on the discovery and development of targeted anti-cancer therapeutics based on synthetic lethality, plans to use the proceeds to speed up the ongoing clinical development of multiple compounds, including its PARP1 selective inhibitors and multiple early pre-clinical projects.
With the financing, the firm targets to accelerate the commercialisation of Senaparib, a potent and novel PARP1/2 inhibitor discovered and developed by IMPACT for advanced ovarian cancer maintenance treatment.
In August 2023, the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), a national bureau responsible for drug supervision in China, accepted the New Drug Application (NDA) for Senaparib in China. A year earlier, the fixed-dose combination capsules of Senaparib and temozolomide for the treatment of adult patients with small-cell lung cancer were granted orphan-drug designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Leiwen Chen, managing partner of Kingray Capital, said in a statement that IMPACT has demonstrated “excellent drug R&D capability and execution ability” and that the biopharma sector is “a strategic emerging industry in China” in which Kingray Capital will invest with a long-term view for value creation.
Chen expects the new financing to help IMPACT make its drugs available to patients as soon as possible, especially on the back of the firm global licence and collaboration agreement signed in 2023 with Eikon Therapeutics and partnership with Huadong Medicine.
IMPACT was established in 2014 with a Series A financing later that year from the corporate VC arm of Hong Kong-listed biopharma firm WuXi AppTec as well as Lilly Asia Ventures and Cenova Ventures, both of which are healthcare-dedicated venture capital (VC) firms.
Before the Series D+ round, its latest equity financing was a $30-million Series C round led by Decheng Capital in August 2018. The firm raised a further $50 million in a Series C extension round led by Chinese biopharma company Junshi Biosciences in December 2020.
