Tracon Raises $14M to Advance Cancer Drug

San Diego’s Tracon Pharmaceuticals says today it has raised $14 million of a planned $22 million round of venture capital needed to advance development of TRC105, a promising therapeutic that inhibits the growth of new blood vessels that supply tumors. The National Cancer Institute also is supporting the company’s research and development, which includes ongoing trials in prostate, bladder, and liver cancer.

JAFCO, the Tokyo-based, publicly traded venture capital group, and Nextech Invest, a specialized oncology fund based in Zurich, Switzerland, led the investment round. They were joined by New York-based Arcus Ventures and the Tokyo-based venture firm BHP. Existing investor Brookline Investments of Birmingham, AL, also participated.

In a statement from the company, Tracon CEO Charles Theuer says the funding will enable the company to build on promising early stage research and complete multiple mid-stage trials of the antibody TRC105. Tracon says it is testing the antibody on a new tumor vascular target known as CD-105, as both a monotherapy and in combination with existing vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors as well as chemotherapy.

JAFCO’s Kenji Harada and Hironori Hozoji (a San Diego-based investment officer with JAFCO Life Science Investment) are joining Tracon’s board, along with Nextech managing partner Myoung-Ok Kwon. Tracon says two prominent oncologists, Harvard University’s William G. Kaelin and Charles L. Sawyers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center also were named to the company’s scientific advisory board.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.