Biotechnology company Eikon Therapeutics announced the initial closing of a $350.7 million Series D financing round that it will use to advance its clinical-stage programs. The new funding brings the total investment in the company to over $1 billion since it was founded in 2019.
The round was led by Eikon’s existing investors with participation from a slate of new investors. Included are top mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, and healthcare and technology-focused venture firms like Lux Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, AME Cloud Ventures, The Column Group, E15 VC, Foresite Capital, General Catalyst, Soros Capital, StepStone Group, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, and UC Investments (Office of the Chief Investment Officer of the Regents of the University of California), among others.
The financing will support the company’s continued growth including ongoing work on clinical-stage programs. Eikon’s lead clinical candidate, EIK1001, is a co-agonist of toll-like receptors 7 and 8 that is now being tested in a Phase III trial for advanced melanoma. According to the company, EIK1001 has demonstrated both single-agent efficacy and promising in-combination activity with anti-PD-(L)1 agents across multiple tumor types.
Other assets in its portfolio are EIK1003, a PARP1 inhibitor that is now in Phase I evaluation in patients with breast, ovarian, prostate, or pancreatic cancers. The company is also developing EIK1004, a central nervous system-penetrant PARP1-selective inhibitor that will soon be tested in Phase I studies targeting brain cancers. In addition, Eikon’s early-stage pipeline features two androgen receptor antagonists and an internally derived WRN inhibitor (EIK1005) that is being studied for its potential as a therapy for patients with MSI-high and other DNA repair-deficient cancers.
Eikon is conducting clinical studies involving its candidates in 28 countries across five continents. The candidates were identified with the help of the company’s proprietary single-molecule tracking (SMT) technology platform which is designed to track the movement of hundreds of thousands of proteins in living cells. Earlier this month, Eikon published a paper in Nature Methods that shared details of its Oblique Line Scan (OLS) imaging capability which it uses along with the SMT technology to visualize protein movement. The company claims that OLS imaging addresses limitations with traditional microscopy by providing higher-resolution imaging across a larger area.
