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Arix co-leads $45m Series B round in firm developing prostate cancer treatment

Global life sciences investor Arix Bioscience has completed its second major investment since its IPO after it co-led a huge eight-figure Series B round in California’s Harpoon Therapeutics.

The $45m (approx. £34.6m) financing round was spearheaded by Arix and New Leaf Venture Partners, and included participation from new investor Taiho Ventures alongside previous backer MPM Capital.

Based in California and founded in 2015, Harpoon has developed two stand-out immuno-oncology programmes, that is treatments that target the immune system to help the body fight cancer, that it now hopes to take to clinical trial following this latest funding round.

The first of these programmes is a clinical candidate which specifically targets metastatic prostate cancer and is expected to enter phase 1 clinical trials in 2018.

Arix Chief Executive, Joe Anderson, commented: “Harpoon’s novel T cell engaging platform has great potential in the discovery and development of important new oncology therapeutics.

“We are very pleased to be joining the company at this exciting stage alongside the impressive founding team and highly experienced co-investors. This is another important deal for Arix, adding to our rapidly growing collection of world-class Group Businesses.”

The round comes after Arix led a $65m investment round in Irish antibiotics business Iterum which was its first since closing its £100m IPO.

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