Ouro Medicines Launches with $120 Million to Tackle Autoimmune Diseases
Ouro Medicines, a biotechnology company based in San Francisco, has recently launched with a significant investment of $120 million in Series A funding. This funding round was co-led by TPG Life Sciences Innovations, NEA, and Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Monograph Capital, GSK, UPMC Enterprises, Boyu/Zoo Capital, LongRiver Investments, and other unnamed investors.
The company, founded by Monograph Capital in partnership with GSK plc, is dedicated to developing immune reset therapeutics for individuals living with chronic immune-mediated diseases. These diseases include a range of conditions where the body’s own immune cells play a driving role, such as B cell mediated diseases, which are the company’s immediate focus. Current treatments for such diseases often require ongoing immunosuppressive therapy and may be minimally effective with high levels of toxicity.
Ouro Medicines aims to leverage T cell engagers, a promising therapeutic modality, to target and deplete specific pathogenic cell populations that drive immune-mediated diseases. By depleting these target cell populations, T cell engagers might be used to reset the immune system to a state before those cells became pathogenic, potentially creating long periods of remission where immunosuppression is unnecessary.
The company’s lead program, OM336, is a BCMA-directed, bispecific T cell engager recently licensed from Keymed Biosciences. BCMA is highly expressed across several B cell subtypes that play a role in driving multiple indications where high specificity and potency are needed to achieve near-complete B cell depletion. Keymed Biosciences is currently studying OM336 in an ongoing Phase 2 expansion study in multiple myeloma in China. Ouro holds exclusive rights outside of Greater China and intends to start its first Phase 1 study in 2025.
Supportive proof-of-concept data has been generated from the off-label use of BCMA-directed T cell engagers in diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, and rheumatoid arthritis. Behind its lead program, Ouro intends to advance a broad set of discovery programs targeting additional dimensions of B cell biology. These programs probe unique subsets of B cells compared to existing therapies in the clinic. Additionally, Ouro’s protein engineering expertise is being applied to next-generation versions of novel T cell engagers to continue to drive innovative treatments for chronic immune-mediated diseases.
The leadership team at Ouro Medicines includes Jaideep Dudani, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, who was most recently part of the founding team of Human Immunology Biosciences (HI-Bio), where he led portfolio development and strategy prior to the acquisition by Biogen. Dudani has played cross-functional roles across R&D, strategy, and business development throughout his career and is also a Portfolio Principal at Monograph Capital.
Ouro’s Board of Directors includes Shinichiro Fuse, PhD (TPG), Matt McAviney, MD (NEA), Brian Matesic, MD (Norwest), Tim Funnell, DPhil (Monograph), and Bo Chen, PhD (Keymed). Supporting the Ouro leadership team are several deeply experienced clinical advisors, including John Davis, MD, MPH, President, Norte Health Consulting and former scientific advisory board member of HI-Bio; Matthew Baker, MD, MS, Clinical Chief in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University and the Co-Director of the Stanford Multidisciplinary Sarcoidosis Program; and Stanford Peng, MD, PhD, most recently President and Head of Research & Development at Alpine Immune Sciences.
Monograph Capital has high conviction that immune reset has the potential to change the course of many autoimmune diseases. “We started Ouro with an intention of building a discovery platform to unlock immune reset therapeutics, and we have been excited to accelerate the company’s development by bringing in OM336, which we believe has great promise based on the preclinical profile and clinical data we’ve seen in oncology,” said Tim Funnell, DPhil, Member, Ouro Medicines Board of Directors and Partner, Monograph Capital. “The combination of learnings from the OM336 clinical program and Ouro’s discovery activities will give us a strong foundation as we aim to build the leading immune reset therapeutics company.”
TPG has been following the theme of deep B cell depletion since initial data came from CAR-T cell therapies. “In Ouro, we found a leadership team and a group of advisors who bring deep knowledge of immune-mediated diseases and the key modalities being investigated for these indications, as well as a wealth of experience in both drug discovery and clinical development,” said Shinichiro Fuse, PhD, Business Unit Partner with TPG Life Sciences Innovations. “We are thrilled to support the company as it works to develop immune reset therapeutics that address serious unmet needs for patients.”
See more funded startups in USA.