NextPoint Therapeutics raises $80 million in Series B financing

US precision immuno-oncology biotech NextPoint Therapeutics has raised $80 million in a Series B financing co-led by Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Germany’s Bayer (BAYN: DE), and Sanofi Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm for French drugmaker Sanofi (Euronext: SAN).

The financing will be used to advance NextPoint’s two lead precision immuno-oncology programs into the clinic, both targeting the newly discovered HHLA2 pathway to activate anti-tumor immune responses.

NextPoint originated from the combined expertise of its academic founders, Gordon Freeman, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and XingXing Zang, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Drs Freeman’s and Zang’s independent discovery and characterization of the HHLA2 pathway formed the basis of the NextPoint approach. The company and its founders have shown in pre-clinical models and with analysis of existing clinical datasets that the HHLA2 pathway is an important tumor-suppressive mechanism in many patients.