Marcelo Bigal, CEO, Ventus Therapeutics

Ventus Therapeutics, a biotech company that uses computational tools to find ways to drug hard-to-hit disease targets, has raised $140 million in financing as it prepares to advance three programs into clinical trials next year.

SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and RA Capital Management co-led the Series C round of funding announced Wednesday. The new capital comes 10 months after Ventus  closed its $100 million Series B round financing. RA Capital led that round.

Ventus, which maintains operations in Boston and Montreal, is developing drugs for autoimmune diseases, inflammation, and neurological disorders. The company discovers its drugs with the help of two proprietary technologies. The first one analyzes the structure of innate immune system proteins, enabling scientists to discover small molecules that can hit these targets. The second technology, named ReSOLVE, goes beyond the analysis of innate immune system proteins. It accounts for how proteins change shape in the fluid environment of the cell.

Both Ventus technologies are used to find and characterize unknown or poorly understood pockets on the surface of proteins. Using the structural information from the protein analysis, Ventus then screens libraries containing billions of compounds in order to find the small molecules that can bind to those pockets.

The specific disease targets of Ventus remain undisclosed. The lead Ventus program, VENT-101, is in development to address inflammation. The drug candidate is a small molecule designed to block NLRP3, a protein that mediates two pro-inflammatory cytokine proteins: IL-1B and IL-18. NLRP3 is also the target of a second Ventus drug program that aims to deliver the therapy into the brain. NLRP3 has been a hot target for drug developers. Roche and Novartis also have NLRP3 inhibitors in their pipelines, each of them added via acquisitions.

The third Ventus program on track to the clinic targets cGAS, a protein that regulates the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway. This pathway is associated with a range of inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.

In addition to supporting plans to advance the three lead programs toward clinical testing, Ventus said it will use the new cash to scale up the ReSOLVE technology to address targets previously considered “undruggable.” The company plans to automate processes and expand the machine learning capabilities of this technology. Ventus said it will also construct larger proprietary virtual libraries.

When Ventus closed its Series B financing last year, CEO Marcelo Bigal told MedCity News that the cash gave the biotech the flexibility to consider options that include taking the company public. The latest financing includes investors that back both public and private companies, and could support potential IPO plans. The other investors in the latest round Qatar Investment Authority, Andreessen Horowitz, BVF Partners, Casdin Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Alexandria Venture Investments, GV, and founding investor Versant Ventures.

Photo by Ventus Therapeutics