VC Deals Only: Oncorus Adds $79.5M to Steer Cancer-Fighting Virus...

VC Deals Only: Oncorus Adds $79.5M to Steer Cancer-Fighting Virus...: Nearly four years ago, the FDA approved a therapy that uses a virus to infect tumor cells and break them down—the first such viral therapy...

Oncorus Adds $79.5M to Steer Cancer-Fighting Virus to Human Testing

Nearly four years ago, the FDA approved a therapy that uses a virus to infect tumor cells and break them down—the first such viral therapy for treating cancer. Oncorus CEO Ted Ashburn says there’s room to improve on these oncolytic viruses and their role in immunotherapy, and his biotech startup is getting ready to show how.

Oncorus is planning to begin a clinical trial next year testing its cancer-fighting virus in solid tumors. The Cambridge, MA, company now has $79.5 million in financing to support its research. The Series B round of funding announced Wednesday was co-led by Cowen Healthcare Investments and Perceptive Advisors.

Research on oncolytic viruses dates to the 1960s. The concept involves using a virus, one that occurs naturally or is engineered, to infect a tumor cell. Once inside the tumor, the virus replicates until it causes the cell to explode, killing it. These cells deaths lead to the immunotherapy step of the treatment. Tumor antigens are released that trigger the immune system to recognize and fight the cancer.

The first FDA-approved oncolytic virus, talimogene laherparepvec (Imlygic), is based on a modified herpes simplex virus. The Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) therapy is injected into the tumor, where the virus replicates and produces a protein intended to stimulate an immune system response. The FDA’s 2015 approval of the Amgen therapy covered melanoma that cannot be treated with surgery.

Like Amgen’s oncolytic virus, lead Oncorus drug candidate ONCR-177 is based on a modified version of the herpes virus. But Ashburn says that Oncorus has made advances in the way it engineers the virus to enable it to carry a bigger therapeutic payload. Onboard ONCR-177 are five anti-cancer proteins that stimulate different parts of the immune system.

“In effect what you’re doing is causing a robust, therapeutic, personalized vaccination for the patient,” says Ashburn.

The Oncorus virus also comes with additional safety measures. Ashburn says ONCR-177 is engineered to replicate only in tumor cells, not in healthy tissue. At the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting in April, Oncorus presented preclinical data showing that treatment with ONCR-177 partially or completely shrunk tumors, and the viral therapy led to protective immunity. Ashburn adds that the safety measures appeared to work: No signs of the virus or its therapeutic payload were detected outside of the tumor.

Ashburn says he envisions ONCR-177 being used in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy that blocks proteins that stop the immune system from recognizing and fighting cancer cells. But in some instances, the oncolytic virus could find use as a standalone treatment, he says.

The company has a second therapeutic candidate in its pipeline based on a synthetic oncolytic virus. Ashburn says this virus is meant to be given intravenously, and that it would circulate throughout the body. Using this approach would allow the virus to potentially treat a wider range of tumors, including lung cancer, where direct injection of a therapy is not practical because it risks puncturing the organ, he says.

Oncorus plans to use the new capital to finance Phase 1 tests of ONCR-177. The company will also continue development of its synthetic oncolytic virus. Ashburn says he expects the company will identify a candidate from that platform early next year.

The research that underpins Oncorus was conducted within venture capital firm MPM Capital until the company spun out in 2016 with $57 million in financing. MPM also participated in the latest Oncorus financing, which included participation from other earlier investors UBS Oncology Impact Fund, Deerfield Management, Arkin Bioventures, Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG), and Astellas Venture Management. New investors in the Series B round include Surveyor Capital, Sphera Funds, IMM Investment, QUAD Investment Management, UTC Investment, SV Investment Corp., and Shinhan Investment-Private Equity.

Source. Frank Vinluan, Xconomy, August 21, 2019

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VC Deals Only: H2O.ai announces $72.5M Series D led by Goldman Sa...

VC Deals Only: H2O.ai announces $72.5M Series D led by Goldman Sa...: H2O.ai ‘s mission is to democratize AI by providing a set of tools that frees companies from relying on teams of data scientists. Today ...

H2O.ai announces $72.5M Series D led by Goldman Sachs

H2O.ai‘s mission is to democratize AI by providing a set of tools that frees companies from relying on teams of data scientists. Today it got a bushel of money to help. The company announced a $72.5 million Series D round led by Goldman Sachs and Ping An Global Voyager Fund.

Previous investors Wells Fargo, Nvidia and Nexus Venture Partners also participated. Under the terms of the deal, Jade Mandel from Goldman Sachs will be joining the H2O.ai board. 

Today’s investment brings the total raised to $147 million.

It’s worth noting that Goldman Sachs isn’t just an investor. It’s also a customer. Company CEO and co-founder Sri Ambati says the fact that customers Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs have led the last two rounds is a validation for him and his company. 

“Customers have risen up from the ranks for two consecutive rounds for us. Last time the Series C was led by Wells Fargo where we were their platform of choice. Today’s round was led by Goldman Sachs, which has been a strong customer for us and strong supporters of our technology,” Ambati told TechCrunch.

The company’s main product, H2O Driverless AI, introduced in 2017, gets its name from the fact it provides a way for people who aren’t AI experts to still take advantage of AI without a team of data scientists. “Driverless AI is automatic machine learning, which brings the power of a world-class data scientists in the hands of everyone. lt builds models automatically using machine learning algorithms of every kind,” Ambati explained.

They introduced a new recipe concept today, which provides all of the AI ingredients and instructions for building models for different business requirements. H2O.ai’s team of data scientists has created and open-sourced 100 recipes for things like credit risk scoring, anomaly detection and property valuation.

The company has been growing since its Series C round in 2017, when it had 70 employees. Today it has 175 and has tripled the number of customers since the prior round, although Ambati didn’t discuss an exact number. The company has its roots in open source and has 20,000 users of its open-source products, according to Ambati.

He didn’t want to discuss valuation and wouldn’t say when the company might go public, saying it’s early days for AI and they are working hard to build a company for the long haul.

Source. Techcrunch, Ron Miller, August 20, 2019

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VC Deals Only: Mortgage Lender Better.com Grows Series C Funding ...

VC Deals Only: Mortgage Lender Better.com Grows Series C Funding ...: After initially securing $70 million for its Series C round in January and raising another $25 million in add-on funding this past spring...

Mortgage Lender Better.com Grows Series C Funding Round to $160M

After initially securing $70 million for its Series C round in January and raising another $25 million in add-on funding this past spring, online mortgage lender Better.com has officially closed off the Series C with a total of $160 million raised, Fortune has learned.

Activant Capital led the latest influx in funding and was joined by Ping An Insurance, Ally Financial, Citigroup, AGNC, American Express Ventures, and Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), as well as existing investors Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins, and Pine Brook. The $160 million round takes the New York-based company’s total funding to $254 million to date and brings its valuation to north of $600 million, Better.com said.

The capital will be used to further scale the mortgage lender’s operations and grow its product offerings, founder and CEO Vishal Garg told Fortune. Garg noted that Better.com has tripled its growth year-on-year since launching in 2016; while the company is at $5 billion in originations to date, Better.com financed $1 billion worth of mortgages in the second quarter of 2019—more than in all of 2016 and 2017 combined—and is on track to lend more than $4 billion in 2019.

“The way things are going, we’re going to be at $10 [billion] to $15 billion of originations next year, which would make us the largest fintech in America,” according to Garg. “We had a lot of strategic investors who weren’t able to make the first close and were really interested in the company. To accommodate them, and considering the growth rate we’ve had this year and our need for further investment capital, we decided to extend the round... We just needed to be way more capitalized.”

The startup is also growing its headcount at a prolific rate; it has expanded from around 200 employees last year to more than 700 people currently, and plans to hit 1,100 employees by the end of the year, Garg said. The company also recently opened its fourth U.S. outpost in Charlotte, N.C.—home to a fervently expanding fintech scene—to go with its offices in New York, Oakland, Irvine, Calif., and Gurgaon, India.

Better.com is part of a wave of fintech startups targeting the home-buying market via tech-oriented platforms that appeal to millennials, who now account for most new mortgages in the U.S. As Fortune has reported, home-buying tech startup recently Flyhomes sealed $141 million in new financing last week, while the mortgage and consumer lending fintech firm Blend raised $130 million in new venture funding earlier this summer.

Garg founded Better.com after experiencing a “terrible” mortgage application process of his own several years ago, which led to he and his wife losing their desired home to an all-cash buyer. The startup’s platform aims to digitize and streamline that process to allow buyers to close a typical mortgage in half the time it usually takes (21 days, versus an industry average of 42 days).

It also deploys a commission-free, fee-less business model that it claims saves borrowers thousands of dollars in costs—with the company generating revenue from originators who “pay us a premium because of the quality of the loans and the loan performance,” Garg said.

“We’re not a balance-sheet lender,” he noted, adding that Better.com has more than 30 investors—including major mortgage originators and financial institutions—who have committed more than $700 billion in financing capacity to the company. The startup is presently active in 40 states, with active applications that would see it expand to all 50 states in the U.S., Garg said.

Activant founder and partner Steve Sarracino, who is now on Better.com’s board, told Fortune that the startup’s “tech-enabled, end-to-end mortgage manufacturing process” allows it to save costs and pass those savings down to consumers. In turn, Better.com has been able to carve out a ever-larger niche for itself in the U.S.’s $15 trillion mortgage market.

“The [mortgage] process is so unbelievably broken, and it all costs the consumer more in terms of APR,” Sarracino said. “Better is the first company that’s looking to fix it end-to-end. It’s not cheap to manufacture a mortgage, and by driving down that cost, it gets passed on to the consumer.”

Better.com also found a place on Fortune and Great Place to Work’s list of the 60 best companies to work for in New York this year—ranking 11th among small and medium-sized companies.

Source. Fortune, Rey Mashayekhi, August 19, 2019

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VC Deals Only: Brazil’s RD Station Nets $50M In Series D Funding ...

VC Deals Only: Brazil’s RD Station Nets $50M In Series D Funding ...: Brazilian digital marketing startup RD Station has raised a $50 million Series D led by Silicon Valley-based Riverwood Capital . RD St...