Columbia has taken an equity stake in the antiviral therapeutics producer, co-founded by two of its faculty members.
RenBio, a US-based antiviral therapy developer, has raised $24m in a series A round and secured a licence for its lead candidate developed at Columbia University.
Industrial conglomerate Ruentex Group led the series A round, while Columbia University secured an equity stake as part of the licence.
RenBio is working on antibody therapeutics. Its Columbia-licensed asset RB-100 is a bispecific antibody compound targeting Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes covid-19.
The compound was created in the lab of David Ho, the Clyde and Helen Wu professor of medicine at Columbia University. Ho co-founded RenBio with Yaoxing Huang, an associate professor of medical sciences also at Columbia.
RenBio will use the cash to complete preclinical studies and begin phase 1 and 2 trials of RB-100 later this year.
Neal Padte, chief operating officer and chief development officer of RenBio, said: “With these funds, we are committed to rapidly progressing RB-100, developed in the lab of RenBio co-founder and globally recognised infectious disease expert, David Ho, to the clinic.”
The company had received $14m out of a $24m target in January 2021, according to a securities filing, suggesting this was a first close of the series A round.
Padte told FierceBiotech the company previously obtained $4m in a seed round but did not offer further details.
