Therini Bio Inc., a biotech firm focused on creating fibrin-targeted treatments to treat inflammatory neurological and retinal diseases, announced today the completion of a $36 million Series A fundraising transaction.
The fundraising round was headed by Dementia Discovery Fund, MRL Ventures Fund, Merck & Co., Inc.’s therapeutics-focused corporate venture fund, Sanofi Ventures, and SV Health Investors’ Impact Medicine Fund.
Eli Lilly and Company joined current investors Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), Dolby Family Ventures, and Foundation for a Better World in the round. The Series A fundraising takes the total amount raised since the company’s start to $62 million.
In neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and multiple sclerosis (MS), as well as in a variety of retinal diseases such as diabetic macular edema (DME), where destructive inflammation plays a role in the disease process, herini Bio is developing therapeutic candidates that selectively target the inflammatory component of fibrin.
The new funding will allow Therini Bio to enhance its pipeline of fibrin-targeting medicines, as well as its lead antibody THN391, which binds the inflammation-driving component of fibrin known to drive immune responses in neurodegenerative and ophthalmologic illnesses.
Importantly, based on our preliminary research, targeting this region has little effect on fibrin’s crucial role in blood clotting and coagulation.
Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA) awarded Therini Bio a $3M non-dilutive funding grant in 2021, which will provide $1M of preclinical research funding to advance the Company’s Alzheimer’s disease program each year through 2024.
Therini Bio is a biotech business dedicated to the development of fibrin-targeted medicines for the treatment of inflammatory neurodegeneration and retinal illnesses.
The company is working on a pipeline of possible first-in-class medicines that target toxic fibrin buildup. The underlying science was licensed based on technology discovered in Katerina Akassoglou, Ph.D.’s laboratories at the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and previously at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
