Immuneering Raises $62m in Series B Round - BiopharmaDirect

Immuneering Raises $62m in Series B Round

January 19, 2021

Immuneering has raised $62m in an oversubscribed Series B round led by high-profile life science investors. The money will be used to support the company's portfolio – particularly its lead candidate – as well as its computational biology services business. The financing was led by Cormorant Asset Management. Surveyor Capital, Rock Springs Capital, as well as funds and accounts managed by BlackRock and Perceptive Advisors, among others, also participated in the round.

Immuneering is developing its lead candidate IMM-1-104 as a dual inhibitor of MEK and a related target, to inhibit this important pathway driving the growth of many tumors while avoiding the feedback loop that causes many patients to develop resistance to traditional MEK inhibitors. By targeting MEK in a novel way, our preclinical models have demonstrated greater durability with reduced overall toxicity.

The funding will further be used to continue the other half of Immuneering's business: computation biology services. This side of the business involves "working with large pharma companies on existing medicines to help them understand how to make those medicines better by targeting them to the right patients, identifying optimal combinations and better understanding the mechanism of action", Zeskind explains.

Immuneering is forging a new approach to drug discovery, fueled by bioinformatics and computational biology. For more than a decade, Immuneering has helped leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies be faster and more productive by analyzing their data to elucidate mechanisms of action, identify biomarkers of response and find new targets, coupled with a powerful chemistry engine to identify potential hits.