Athos, an autoimmune and cancer biotech, is raising $35M for clinical trials

Athos Ther­a­peu­tics is rais­ing a $35 mil­lion Se­ries B, it con­firmed to End­points News. The Tor­rance, CA-based biotech will de­ploy the mon­ey on its AI-based pre­ci­sion small mol­e­cules for au­toim­mune dis­eases and var­i­ous can­cer in­di­ca­tions.

About $10 mil­lion of the ex­pect­ed haul will go to­ward the lead as­set, an in­flam­ma­tion and mu­cos­al heal­ing-tar­get­ed treat­ment for in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease, CEO Dim­itrios Il­iopou­los said in an emailed state­ment. The biotech an­tic­i­pates Phase I topline da­ta by March and plans to start a Phase IIa by the third quar­ter of 2024, he added, not­ing the cap­i­tal will al­so fund it through that study.

Il­iopou­los said a sec­ond as­set, an FLT3 in­hibitor known as ATH-272, will go through a Phase I in acute myeloid leukemia. Dai­ichi Sankyo won an FDA ap­proval for an AML drug in cer­tain pa­tients with FLT3-ITD mu­ta­tions in Ju­ly 2023.

The in­flam­ma­tion R&D field has ex­pe­ri­enced a rush of ac­tiv­i­ty in the past year with big-name deals like Mer­ck’s Prometheus Bio­sciences ac­qui­si­tion and Roche’s move for Roivant and Pfiz­er’s Tela­vant.

Athos mines through about 20,000 hu­man pa­tient sam­ples from Cleve­land Clin­ic, the Crohn’s & Col­i­tis Foun­da­tion and the La­hey Hos­pi­tal & Med­ical Cen­ter. The biotech has a pipeline of oth­er as­sets for atopic der­mati­tis, Sjö­gren’s syn­drome, rheuma­toid arthri­tis, lu­pus and oth­er au­toim­mune dis­eases and can­cers, per its web­site.

The small start­up has raised $21 mil­lion to date in Se­ries A and seed funds, dat­ing back to ear­ly 2020. None of the back­ing has come from tra­di­tion­al biotech ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, Il­iopou­los said. Athos’ largest share­hold­ers are the co-founders and Os­h­taa Asti Group, which is an in­vest­ment group made up of for­mer ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, in­clud­ing co-man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Yan­nis Galanakis. The biotech’s co-founders are Il­iopou­los, chair and med­ical chief Al­lan Pan­tuck (a sci­en­tif­ic co-founder of Kite Phar­ma), and UCLA pro­fes­sor Michael Jung.

Il­iopou­los is a for­mer UCLA pro­fes­sor who has gone on to co-found an­oth­er small mol­e­cule biotech, known as At­ti­ca Sci­ences, that is de­vel­op­ing med­i­cines based on an­cient Greek herbs and olive oil. He al­so co-found­ed an AI health­care com­pa­ny known as Dya­nia Health.

Ear­li­er this week, Athos named re­cent­ly re­tired Gold­man Sachs ex­ec­u­tive Lau­rence Stein to its board.

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