German cancer biotech CatalYm has secured $150m in a Series D funding round following the recently announced data for its lead monoclonal antibody visugromab. 

The company has centred its pipeline on drugs targeting GDF-15 or growth differentiation factor-15, which acts as a key regulator of immune resistance to cancer therapies. The company was in the news earlier this year, when it shared follow-up data of its drug visugromab showing efficacy in heavily pretreated patients.   

The new funding, led by Canaan Partners and Bioqube Ventures, is set to fund the company’s planned Phase IIb trial of visugromab in select checkpoint-naïve front-line and second-line treatment settings.  

The drug has so far been studied in combination with Bristol Myers Squibb's (BMS) anti-PD-1 drug Opdivo (nivolumab) in patients with non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), hepatocellular cancer, and urothelial cancer. CatalYm presented data from the ongoing GDFATHER Phase I/IIa trial (NCT04725474) that is testing this combination at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting held in Chicago, on 2 June. 

Across all tumour types, patients who received visugromab showed an objective response rate of 16.7%. The average duration of response surpassed 15 months for NSCLC, and 14 months for urothelial cancer, with 77% of the patients’ responses still ongoing. These 90 patients were heavily pretreated and had experienced failed anti-PD-1 therapies in the past.  

Anti PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor drugs, such as BMS’ Opdivo, enhance the immune system’s ability to fight cancer by blocking the PD-1 receptor on T cells, a checkpoint that normally helps keep immune responses in check. Cancer cells often exploit this pathway to avoid being attacked by the immune system. 

Elevated GDF-15 levels in cancers can cause anti-PD-1 drugs to fail by creating an immunosuppressive tumour environment that hinders T cell activation and recruitment, which visugromab is designed to target.  

Checkpoint inhibitors have pulled in billions over the last few years. MSD’s PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab) was the world’s top-selling drug last year, making $25bn. BMS’ Opdivo generated $9bn in the same year, as per the company financials. One of the reasons for the high sales is the drugs’ ability to be paired with other anti-cancer medicines. 

In the announcement accompanying the funding, CatalYm’s CEO Phil L’Huillier said: “We continue to demonstrate visugromab’s potential to induce cancer remission depth and durability across multiple solid tumour indications, emphasising the substantial role that visugromab could play in a novel anti-cancer therapy regimen.”