Elion Therapeutics, a biotech focused on invasive fungal infections, has raised $81 million in a Series B funding round for its early-stage candidate, it announced Monday morning.
The candidate, a polyene antifungal dubbed SF001, is being evaluated as an early antifungal therapy for presumed invasive fungal disease and treatment of invasive aspergillosis. It scored fast track and qualified infectious disease product designations from the FDA last year, has already completed a first-in-human single-ascending dose study and is now in a multiple-ascending dose study.
While this version of the drug is an IV infusion, the company also has an oral option in the feasibility phase.
According to the company, treatment with one of the four currently available classes of antifungal drugs for invasive fungal infections can come with a host of problems, including antifungal resistance, organ toxicity and drug interactions.
Elion designed its drug to avoid these issues: The active molecule in SF001 is an analog of the antifungal amphotericin B, one of the four classes of drugs currently available, but it avoids the kidney impairment that typically occurs with treatment “through increased specificity to fungal cells,” the company wrote. Amphotericin B has been used since the 1950s to treat fungal infections, but kidney impairment occurs in up to 80% of patients, according to Elion.
James Flynn“Fungal infections are a growing medical concern globally, and we have an opportunity with this therapeutic candidate to address millions of disease cases and preventable deaths that occur every year,” said James Flynn, a managing partner at Deerfield Management, which co-led the funding round.
More than 150 million people across the globe have serious fungal infections, and severe infections cause about 2.5 million annual deaths, typically in immuno-compromised people like those who have HIV/AIDS, received an organ transplant or are on cancer therapies, according to New York-based Elion.
The AMR Action Fund and Illinois Ventures also contributed to the funding round.
Elion, formerly known as Sfunga, was formed in 2019 by Deerfield Management and Martin Burke, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kieren Marr, the former director of transplant and oncology infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, leads the team as president and chief medical officer.