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Venture Capital News: Glympse Bio Announces $46.7M Series B

2020-07-16
CAMBRIDGE, MA, Glympse Bio has closed an oversubscribed $46.7 million Series B financing.
Glympse Bio (Glympse), a biotechnology company advancing the way diseases are understood, tracked, and treated, has closed an oversubscribed $46.7 million Series B financing. The proceeds from the financing will support continued development of Glympse's novel biosensor platform in fibrotic diseases such as Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), oncology, and infectious diseases.

The financing round was led by Section 32 and includes new investors Temasek, DNS Capital, New Leaf Venture Partners, Waterman Ventures, and Catalio Capital Management, as well as existing investors, including LS Polaris Innovation Fund, ARCH Venture Partners, CRV, GreatPoint Ventures, Gilead Sciences, and others also participated. In connection with the financing, Steven Kafka, Ph.D., Managing Partner at Section 32, and George Zachary, General Partner at CRV, will join the Glympse Board of Directors. Cayce Denton, Director at Temasek, and Andrew Perlman, Managing Partner at GreatPoint Ventures, will join the Board as Observers.

"The confidence and commitment from our new and existing investors further reinforces Glympse's vision to improve the way diseases are understood, treatments are developed, healthcare is delivered, and patients are restored to health," said Caroline J. Loew, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Glympse. "Glympse will advance into PMA-enabling studies in NASH and explore the potential of the platform across multiple other diseases, such as oncology and infectious diseases. The addition of our new board members and expansion of our clinical advisory board will help to guide Glympse as we enhance our understanding of diseases, improve disease detection, and predict treatment response."

Dr. Kafka added, "The Glympse platform is an exciting new approach to enhance our understanding of and to positively impact human disease. The executive team has executed on its vision with focus, collaboration, and innovation. I look forward to contributing to Glympse's future growth and success as the company executes on its clinical development plans across multiple diseases and expands its reach with new BioPharma collaborations."

The proceeds from the financing will support continued development of Glympse's novel biosensor platform in Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), a disease that impacts 16 million people in the U.S. and 100 million worldwide. The bioengineered, tunable sensors will be used to determine clinical trial participants' stage of disease at initial screening and to determine response to study treatment in PMA-enabling NASH studies. The biosensors avoid the difficulties seen with needle liver biopsy by providing a safe, repeatable, noninvasive measure of disease activity directly at the liver, thereby potentially predicting the stage of NASH in a patient long before histopathology changes become visible and enabling serial monitoring of treatment progress. Glympse completed first-in-human studies with their NASH product earlier this year. In addition to the NASH pivotal studies, the Series B funding will support further development of the company's oncology program and initiate development of the infectious disease program.

Wendy Winckler, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, added, "We have engineered tunable and specific biosensors to better understand complex diseases such as fibrosis, cancer, infections, and inflammation. Using a novel noninvasive approach, we can measure real-time biological signals that translate into clinically actionable results. We are paving the way to improve the continuum of care for NASH and build a comprehensive understanding of the disease trajectory that doesn't currently exist. In oncology, we can directly track tumor progression at the site of disease and measure its response to treatment across a broad range of immunotherapies, targeted therapies, and other standards-of-care. This funding enables us to continue the development of our current programs and expand the application of our platform into new therapeutic indications."

Additionally, Glympse strengthens its Clinical Advisory Board with the addition of Padmanee Sharma, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology and Immunology in the Division of Cancer Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Scott Joseph Antonia, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Medicine and Director of the DCI Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at Duke Cancer Center.

About Glympse Bio

Glympse Bio is focused on better understanding diseases to transform disease detection and predict treatment response. Glympse is transforming the measurement of disease progression in vivo using bioengineered, tunable sensors that are designed for each protease-mediated disease. In October 2019, Glympse announced a strategic collaboration with Gilead Sciences to evaluate Glympse's technology as both a diagnostic and prognostic tool. Founded in 2015, Glympse Bio is an MIT spin-out from the laboratory of renowned bioengineer, Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia. Glympse is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, please visit www.glympsebio.com.
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