Quench Bio Raises $50 Million to Advance Therapies for Inflammatory Diseases

Quench Bio Raises $50 Million to Advance First-in-Class Medicines Targeting Inflammatory Diseases

Photo: Samantha Truex, CEO of Quench Bio

Quench Bio said it raised $50 million in a series A financing to advance development of therapies for rare and common serious inflammatory diseases by targeting a family of proteins known as gasdermin.

RA Capital Management led the financing round, with participation from new investor Abbvie Ventures. Atlas Venture and Arix Bioscience, which co-founded and seeded the company, also participated in the round. Atlas Venture incubated Quench Bio since inception.

Quench Bio’s lead therapeutic centers on inhibiting Gasdermin D, which has been recently discovered as a key target at the core of multiple inflammatory cell death pathways. The Gasdermin D is associated with numerous inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

“Targeting gasdermin provides a unique therapeutic opportunity, as there are currently no marketed therapies inhibiting inflammatory cell death,” said Samantha Truex, CEO of Quench Bio. “Unlike approaches that target individual inflammasomes or cytokines, by targeting gasdermin, we aim to simultaneously inhibit multiple inflammatory cell death pathways that drive severe inflammatory diseases.”

Josh Resnick, managing director and co-head of Ventures at RA Capital, will join the Quench Bio board as a new director alongside Adam Houghton, head of AbbVie Ventures. Other board members include Bruce Booth of Atlas Venture, Jonathan Tobin of Arix Bioscience, Herbert Waldmann, director at the Max Planck Institute, Jo Viney, president, CSO and co-founder of Pandion Therapeutics, and Quench Bio CEO Truex.

Author: Rare Daily Staff