Goldfinch Bio Secures $100 Million to Advance Treatments for Rare and Metabolic Kidney Diseases

Goldfinch Bio has raised $100 million to advance development of its experimental therapies for rare and metabolic kidney diseases.

Eventide Asset Management led the oversubscribed series B financing, with participation by new investors Wellington Management, Ally Bridge Group, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Casdin Capital, and Irving Investors, along with existing investors Gilead Sciences, Yonjin Capital, Schroeder Adveq, and other undisclosed institutional investors.

“The proceeds from this financing will allow us to advance both GFB-887 and GFB-024 through clinical proof-of-concept in multiple underserved patient populations, with the additional goal of validating our precision medicine approach to treating kidney diseases,” said Anthony Johnson, president and CEO of Goldfinch Bio.

Proceeds from the financing will enable the advancement of GFB-887 and GFB-024 through three potential clinical proof-of-concept readouts—in FSGS and DN and in CB1-mediated DN, respectively—and will also support continued development of the biotech’s discovery platform and preclinical pipeline.

GFB-887 is a first-in-class selective inhibitor of Transient Receptor Potential Canonical Channel 5 (TRPC5), and GFB-024 is a peripherally-restricted cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1) inverse agonist.

Goldfinch plans to initiate a phase 2 clinical trial of GFB-887 in patients with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a rare disorder characterized by progressive scarring of the kidney that leads to end-stage kidney disease, and diabetic nephropathy (DN), two diseases often driven by over-activation of the TRPC5-Rac1 pathway, in mid-2021, and to submit an investigational new drug application for GFB-024 to treat CB1-mediated DN in 2021.

Goldfinch entered into a licensing option agreement for GFB-024 with Takeda in October 2019 in which Takeda has the option, prior to the initiation of pivotal studies, to request Goldfinch Bio negotiate with Takeda for sub-licensing of Japanese rights.

The new financing comes on the heels of a major collaboration focused on diabetic kidney diseases with Gilead Sciences, signed in May, that came with $55 million in an upfront payment and up to $2 billion in potential milestone and royalty payments.

Under that deal, Goldfinch will use its Kidney Genome Atlas, a comprehensive registry of patients with kidney diseases integrating genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic data with patient clinical profiles, to identify targets of interest. It will also use its biology platform of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived kidney cells and kidney organoids to validate targets and support discovery and development of products to which Gilead will have exclusive option rights. Through sequencing the DNA of a large cohort of diabetic patients with and without kidney disease, Goldfinch plans to expand the scope of the KGA beyond orphan kidney diseases to include diabetic kidney diseases.

Photo: Anthony Johnson, president and CEO of Goldfinch Bio

Author: Rare Daily Staff