Mantra Bio Raises $9 Million in Series A-2 Financing to Advance Development of Lead Targeted Exosome Therapeutics Program
VaccineFinancing
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Mantra Bio today announced it has raised $9 million in a Series A-2 financing to advance the development of its lead targeted exosome therapeutics program. New investor, Samsung Securities, joined existing investors, including 8VC, Viking Global Investors, Illumina, BoxGroup and Allen & Company in the financing round. The company's overall Series A funding, including a $25 million Series A-1, totals $34 million.
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Source: PRNewswire
(PRNewsfoto/Mantra Bio)
"Mantra Bio has made significant progress in building out REVEAL™, our exosome engineering platform, and leveraging the technology to advance two exosome-based therapeutic programs through preclinical discovery, with a development candidate selected for our lead program aimed at ophthalmic diseases," said Alex Mok, Mantra Bio's CEO and co-founder. "The new Series A-2 funds will enable Mantra Bio to advance our lead development candidate through IND enabling studies. The support from Samsung Securities and our existing investors is a strong vote of confidence in the potential of our platform, our therapeutic pipeline strategy, and our progress."
Mok noted the company has also developed a proprietary, scalable exosome manufacturing process. "As a new therapeutic modality, manufacturing is critical to the success of our development program and platform," he said. "We believe the yield, purity and consistency we have achieved in our CMC manufacturing process will enable Mantra to deliver best in class therapeutics to patients across a breadth of indications."
The company's programs include targeted exosome therapeutics for the treatment of certain ocular diseases and a novel vaccine for infectious disease. The lead program, in ophthalmology, employs engineered bi-specific exosomes that precisely target multiple disease pathways. Mantra has engineered exosomes to deliver an abundance of different surface-loaded therapeutic engagers to diseased cells and leveraged the ability of exosomes to localize them to key tissue segments of the eye. "This approach is highly differentiated from conventional approaches such as antibodies," Mok said.
Mantra Bio's technology capitalizes on exosomes, natural nanoparticles secreted by cells for cell-to-cell communication. REVEAL is an exosome engineering platform that rapidly designs, tests, and optimizes exosome therapeutics. The platform combines AI/machine-learning and synthetic biology to design potent, precision therapeutics directed at a wide range of tissue and cellular targets. Therapeutic exosome candidates are designed in silico, screened for therapeutic potency and pharmacokinetics in vitro and in vivo, and then optimized in a dry lab-to-wet lab development cycle. The integrated platform enables the company to generate large numbers of product candidates for evaluation and accelerate the concept-to-discovery cycle.
About Mantra Bio
Mantra Bio is developing next generation, targeted therapeutics based on its proprietary exosome engineering platform, REVEAL™. The REVEAL™ platform, which integrates computational biology and bench lab automation, leverages the diversity of exosomes to enable the rational design of therapeutics directed at a wide range of tissue and cellular targets. Mantra Bio has also established a scalable biomanufacturing process and related technologies to ensure this new class of therapeutics can be reproducibly made at high purity, consistency, and yield. The company's initial pipeline includes engineered exosome therapeutics in the areas of ophthalmology and infectious diseases. Investors include 8VC, Viking Global Investors, Samsung Securities, BoxGroup, Allen & Company LLC, and Illumina. Learn more about Mantra Bio at www.mantrabio.com
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