Kinnate Biopharma Lands $98M Series C To Fight Difficult-to-treat Cancers

Kinnate Biopharma has closed a $98 million Series C round of funding.

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The San Diego-based company is discovering and developing small molecule kinase inhibitors for difficult-to-treat, genomically-defined cancers. Its portfolio of molecule inhibitors target therapy for patients that are otherwise not responding or are resisting currently available precision medicines, the company said.

RA Capital Management led the investment with participation from additional new investors, including Viking Global Investors, Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners and Fidelity Management & Research Company, as well as existing investors Foresite Capital, OrbiMed, Nextech Invest and Vida Ventures.

In December 2019, Kinnate closed a $74.5 million Series B financing. This brings the company’s total funding raised to $172.5 million since the company was founded in 2018, according to Crunchbase data.

The new funding will be used to scale Kinnate’s programs to get the portfolio of kinase inhibitors into clinical testing next year, the company said.

“In just over two years, Kinnate has built a proprietary pipeline of kinase inhibitors from the ground up, and this significant financing positions us to advance at least one of our lead product candidates into clinical development in the first half of next year,” said Nima Farzan, CEO of Kinnate, in a statement. Fazan was appointed CEO in May.

Another biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and treatment of cancers also announced it raised significant funding Wednesday. We reported earlier today on Freenome, which raised an oversubscribed $270 million Series C financing toward a proprietary multiomics platform for early cancer detection with a routine blood draw. RA Capital Management and Fidelity Management & Research Company were also involved in that investment.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias