Electra Therapeutics is incandescent, glowing on the heels of a $183 million series C financing intended to fuel the biotech’s just-launched pivotal trial for its rare disease candidate.
Nextech and EQT Life Sciences co-led the charge, with participation from Sanofi, Mubadala Capital, OrbiMed, Blue Owl Capital and RA Capital Management, among others, according to an Oct. 22 release.
The oversubscribed series C is a significant jump from the $84 million Electra raised in 2022, especially given the current rocky financing environment. The fundraise “reflects some encouraging signs in the market,” Electra President and CEO Kathy Dong told Fierce Biotech.
“There are numerous investors who are truly digging in and evaluating opportunities to deploy capital, and our profile resonated with them,” Dong said in an emailed statement, citing Electra’s clinical proof of concept data, a lead program in late-stage development in an area of high unmet need, plus a growing pipeline.
“It was highly encouraging to hear from multiple investors that our first-in-class and first-in-disease story was differentiating and refreshing, and that there is support in the ecosystem for innovation,” she added.
The South San Francisco-based biotech will channel the new funds toward a global phase 2/3 trial evaluating its lead candidate ELA026. The potentially first-in-class monoclonal antibody targets signal regulatory proteins (SIRP) in an effort to selectively deplete pathological immune cells.
The pivotal trial is assessing ELA026 as a front-line treatment for secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (sHLH), a rare hyperinflammatory disease that lacks sufficient therapeutic options. The condition can be triggered by cancer, infection, autoimmune disease or immunotherapy and requires immediate intervention.
The pivotal portion of the study includes both adults and children and has already started dosing at sites in the U.S. and Europe. The study is designed to enroll up to 90 patients, with the primary endpoint measuring overall survival at Week 8.
Dong expects trial enrollment to wrap in 2027 and for top-line results to read out shortly after that.
The trial is a continuation of a phase 1b study in malignancy-associated HLH—the condition when it is tied to cancer—in which ELA026 achieved an 100% overall survival rate at eight weeks.
The investigational therapy has received breakthrough designation from the FDA and priority medicines designation from European regulators, the first asset to receive such statuses in sHLH, according to the biotech.
“We are working closely with regulatory agencies and leveraging these designations to accelerate development and bring ELA026 to patients as quickly as possible,” Electra Chief Medical Officer Kim-Hien Dao, Ph.D., said in a separate Oct. 22 release.
The biotech’s interactions with the FDA have been very collaborative, according to Dong.
“They recognize the high unmet need in sHLH and the potential of ELA026 to provide meaningful benefit for patients,” the CEO said about the agency.
Dong, who shifted from Electra’s parent Star Therapeutics to her current CEO role back in 2023, believes ELA026 in sHLH has the potential to be “effectively commercialized by a small company” and that Electra has “a good understanding” of what it takes to successfully bring the therapy to market.
“A focused commercial team can engage key clinicians, as treatment is largely concentrated within academic medical centers,” Dong explained, leaning on past commercialization chops. The Novartis and Gilead Sciences alum brings extensive experience in drug marketing and launches, most notably with Gilead’s hepatitis C breakthroughs Sovaldi and Harvoni.
She also underscored the rapid identification of patients that typically happens given the urgent and well-defined nature of the symptoms, which helps patients efficiently access treatment.
But commercialization is still some time away. For now, Electra’s series C cash will also be used to help expand studies of ELA026 into hematologic cancers and help move another SIRP-targeted program called ELA822 into the clinic for immunology and inflammation conditions.