Apeiron Closes $17.5 Million Series A and Launches Strategic Partnerships
GT Apeiron Therapeutics (‘Apeiron’) announced it has completed a $17.5 million Series A financing. Panacea Venture led the investment round with participation from Viva BioInnovator and existing investors. This is the company’s second round of financing in the last year following a Pre-A+ round in May 2021. The investment will enable the company to advance its lead CDK7 program to enter clinical trials, as well as several earlier stage programs. In conjunction with the financing, James Huang, Founding Managing Partner at Panacea Venture joined the Apeiron Board of Directors.
Apeiron, in collaboration with Exscientia (NASDAQ: EXAI), is developing a pipeline of novel CDK therapies. Its leading asset, GTAEXS617, an orally bioavailable, highly potent and selective small-molecule inhibitor of CDK7, is currently in IND-enabling studies and pre-clinical data will be presented at this year’s AACR.
Apeiron also announced a strategic partnership with Viva Biotech (HK: 01873) under which Viva Biotech provides world-leading structure-based drug discovery expertise to enhance Apeiron’s AI-empowered innovative drug discovery and development platform.
“We are excited to welcome a group of visionary investors, embracing our journey and mission to deliver breakthrough therapies to cancer patients globally,” said Dr. Mingxi Li, Co-Founder and CEO of Apeiron, “Over the past two years, our team has built a unique pipeline of precision oncology therapies, focusing on CDKs and synthetic lethality. We will continue strengthen our integrated drug discovery platform with AI and structural biology.”
About GT Apeiron Therapeutics
Apeiron is strategically based in Shanghai and in the San Francisco Bay Area, with significant collaborations in the UK enabling us to tap into technologies and talent from all three continents. Our team and partners bring together deep expertise in oncology and drug discovery to enable efficient and scalable discovery and development of novel drugs.
About Panacea Venture
Panacea Venture is a healthcare focused venture capital firm, with offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Silicon Valley. Founded in 2017, Panacea Venture focuses on investing in and incubating early-stage life science companies with breakthrough technologies and discoveries that can potentially address unmet medical needs and enhance the quality of life on a global scale. Our investment team members are located across China, U.S., and Europe, with an extensive coverage of all the major global life sciences hubs.
About Viva Biotech Holdings
Since its establishment in 2008, Viva Biotech (01873.HK) has always been adhering to the mission of "Becoming the cradle of global innovative biotech companies from around the world" and provided one-stop services for drug R&D and production to global biopharmaceutical innovators. Leveraging the technical advantages in the field of Structure-based Drug Discovery (SBDD), we provide leading CRO drug discovery services and CMC / CDMO services throughout the whole drug production process to global biopharmaceutical clients. At the same time, we focus on finding and investing in high potential biotech start-ups, solve unmet clinical medical needs in the form of EFS (service for equity), and continue to build an open cooperation platform and win-win ecosystem for biotech innovation.
