Semaglutide(Yichang Humanwell)

Biotechnology startup Prolynxhas raised $70 million in Series A funding that will support plans to develop obesity drugs that require less frequent dosing than existing medications.Announced Thursday, the Emeryville, California-based startups financing was led by 5AM Ventures, OrbiMed and Monograph Capital. The company will use that cash to advance a portfolio of longer-acting incretin drugs which stimulate or mimic the effects of certain gut hormones as well as non-incretin therapies, according to CEO Chris Boulton.Boultoun described the biotechs portfolio as potential solutions for a disease, obesity, that is not just one condition, but multiple conditions. That view is reflected by the opportunity drugmakers still see in making new obesity medicines, despite the dominance of two effective and widely used therapies, Eli Lillys Zepbound and Novo Nordisks Wegovy.Those drugs spur significant weight loss, but also require weekly injections and are associated with certain gastrointestinal side effects that can lead people to stop treatment. Many drugmakers are tinkering with new variationsthat might be more potent, convenient, tolerable or dosed less frequently, increasing the likelihood that a patient stays on treatment.The potential reward is substantial. Combined sales this year of Lillys Zepbound and Mounjaro a diabetes drug that shares Zepbounds same active ingredient have made it the worlds most lucrative medicine. Some analysts expectthe market for Zepbound and other drugs like it to surpass $100 billion by 2030.That opportunity has spurred dealmaking by large pharmaceutical companies and investments by venture capitalists. Each of the last two years, venture firms have poured at least $1 billion into startups working on metabolic disease drugs, according to BioPharma Dive data.Chris Boulton, a veteran of Amgen and Sanofi, joined Prolynx as its CEO in November 2025.Permission granted by ProlynxProlynx aims to stand out by focusing on drugs that can be dosed as infrequently as once monthly or quarterly.Its leaning on a type of extended-release technology Prolynx originally targeted for usein cancer when the company was launched more than a decade ago by founders Daniel Santi and Gary Ashley.According to Boulton, the companys technology involves proprietary chemical linkers that bind a drug to a carrier molecule and enables a controlled, predictable and sustained release of that therapy. One way Prolynx will use it is to make a version of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novos Wegovy, thats administered once monthly.If you can find treatments that last a little bit longer, you can smooth out those peaks and troughs and minimize some dose-related side effects, Boulton said.Boulton said the company intends to make use of a regulatory pathwaythat enables drugmakers to bring to market modified versions of existing medicines more quickly, in part, by borrowing from existing data.Behind a longer-acting semaglutide are formulations of a dual-acting GLP-1/GIPR agonist and an amylin drug both well-studied obesity targets that could be dosed monthly or quarterly. The company didnt disclose when it expects to get its experimental medicines into clinical testing.Boulton, who has worked in obesity or metabolic drug roles at Amgen, Sanofi and AstraZeneca, joined Prolynx in November.Working at big companies, you know what good looks like, he said. You know where the bar is and you can aim for that. '