Attovia Therapeutics has completed an oversubscribed $90 million Series C financing, which the company plans to use along with existing cash and investments to advance its two lead pipeline candidates through clinical proof-of-concept, as well as expand its pipeline of treatments for immune-mediated disorders.
That pipeline, Attovia said, will consist of therapies for inflammatory and immune (I&I) diseases that were developed through the company’s Attobody™ antibody engineering platform. Attovia’s lead assets include its sole clinical-phase candidate ATTO-1310, a subcutaneous (SQ), half-life extended (HLE) anti-IL-31 biotherapeutic that is being developed to treat pruritic conditions such as chronic pruritus of unknown origin (CPUO); and ATTO-3712, a first-in-class half-life extended bispecific targeting IL-3 as well as IL-31 that will be developed for the treatment of atopic dermatitis and other inflammatory conditions.
Both candidates were developed through the Attobody platform, designed to develop “biparatopic” nanobodies or “Attobodies” capable of treating immune-mediated disorders, citing as an example inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Attobodies consist of two single heavy chain only (VHH) antibody fragments connected by a linker. Each VHH binds an epitope in a functional domain on a target protein; each Attobody binds two epitopes at the same time.
Attovia licenses the platform from Alamar Biosciences, a precision proteomics company specializing in disease detection that launched Attovia in 2023 by teaming up with the lead investor in its $60 million Series A financing, Frazier Life Sciences.
“There are three very attractive attributes of this technology that we have been honing,” Attovia CEO Tao Fu told GEN Edge. “Our Attobodies can achieve best-in-class potency as a result of the biparatopic binding mode and the resulting very high affinity. Just think about binding something with two arms instead of one. If one falls off, the other still stays on. So basically, it has this hold that never falls off, which gives you a very, very high potency.”
The other attractions of Attobody technology, Fu said, include its speed and modular nature.
“Works like Lego®”
“Each Attobody almost works like Lego® pieces so you can put them together. You can fuse them to Fc fusion proteins. And we can also tune or extend the half-life of the molecule, for example, to make them a subcutaneous dosing every 12 weeks or quarterly,” Fu said. “This infrequent dosing concept is very attractive in immunology applications.”
The financing is intended to fund early-to-mid-stage clinical studies for ATTO-1310 and ATTO-3712. In January, Attovia dosed the first patient in a Phase I trial (NCT06787586) designed to assess ATTO-1310 in healthy adults and patients with chronic pruritus.
“We’re also thinking about other pruritic conditions with high unmet medical needs; an example will be cholestatic pruritus. There’s a range of pruritic conditions we can go after with this agent,” Fu said.
The Phase I trial is expected to be completed by May 2026, “but we may get interim patient cohort data earlier than that,” Fu added.
To date, no treatments for CPUO have been approved by the FDA. In September 2024, Sanofi acknowledged that the first study of its Phase III LIBERTY-CPUO-CHIC program (NCT05263206) evaluating Dupixent® (dupilumab) in adults with uncontrolled and severe CPUO, called Study A, did not achieve statistical significance in its primary itch responder endpoint despite what the company called favorable numerical improvements. Sanofi added that the drug showed “nominally” significant improvements in all other itch endpoints including change from baseline; percent of patients achieving no/mild itch; and change in itch-related quality of life from baseline. Sanofi said it will launch a second trial or Study B as a pivotal study in CPUO for Dupixent, an IL-4 and IL-13 inhibitor which Sanofi co-markets with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
Attovia says ATTO-3712 will offer efficacy and convenient dosing in atopic dermatitis, the drug’s lead indication—and potentially in other inflammatory skin conditions such as chronic spontaneous urticaria, and prurigo nodularis. ATTO-3712 is in IND-enabling phase, with the company planning to start Phase I clinical studies in the second half of this year.
“We will try to achieve a quarterly dosing,” Fu said.
New therapies, blockbuster sales
Numerous therapies are FDA-approved for atopic dermatitis—including, most recently, two treatments approved in December for forms of the disease: Galderma’s Nemluvio (nemolizumab-ilto), an IL-31 inhibitor biologic; and Vtama (tapinarof) cream (1%), an aryl hydrocarbon receptor agonist and nonsteroidal topical cream by Dermavant, an Organon company.
The biggest selling atopic dermatitis drug is Dupixent; its multiple indications include the treatment of adults and children aged six months and older with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis whose disease is not adequately controlled with topical prescription therapies or when those therapies are not advisable. Last year, Dupixent generated blockbuster global product sales of €13.07 billion ($14.8 billion).
Going forward, Attovia plans to develop bispecific or multi-specific antibodies targeting three or more targets in the same molecule.
“Our technology is uniquely suited for that because of the high potency we can achieve for each individual target, but also the modularity with which we can piece them together with ease,” Fu said. “This is really kind of the sweet spot and the focus of the company, which is developing bispecifics and multispecifics in immunology.”
The rest of Attovia’s pipeline consists of ATTO-004, a multi-specific drug candidate targeting IBD, and two multi-specific discovery-stage programs with undisclosed targets, ATTO-005 and ATTO-006.
Fu said the Series C gives Attovia enough capital to provide it a financial runway stretching “multiple” years, it said, though the company will not disclose how many. The latest financing brings to $255 million the total capital raised by Attovia, whose name is a portmanteau for Attobody and the word “vitality.” That capital includes the Series A funding plus an oversubscribed $105 million financing completed in May 2024.
The Series C was led by Deep Track Capital with participation from new investors that included Vida Ventures, Sanofi Ventures, and Mirae Asset Capital Life Science. Attovia also attracted participation from existing investors that included Frazier Life Sciences, venBio, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Nextech Ventures, Cormorant Asset Management, EcoR1 Capital, Marshall Wace, and Illumina Ventures.
In conjunction with the financing, Rebecca Luse, a managing director with Deep Track Capital, will join Attovia’s board.
“We are highly impressed with the team’s speed and quality of disciplined execution, and we are looking forward to supporting their growth and success as they work to realize the full potential of their platform and pipeline programs,” Luse stated.
