Adnexus Therapeutics, Inc. recently announced it has closed $27M in a Series B financing. The financing was led by Venrock Associates, which joined founding investors Atlas Venture, Flagship Ventures, and Polaris Venture Partners in the round.

Adnexus is a private biotechnology company developing a breakthrough class of protein therapeutics known as AdNectins™.

"Cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and many other medical conditions continue to need alternatives to existing therapeutics. The novel class of therapeutics, Adnectins, represents a unique opportunity to potentially address these needs. Adnexus' pipeline of new drugs have the potential to surpass limitations of traditional protein and small molecule therapeutics", said Anders Hove, General Partner at Venrock.

Adnexus Therapeutics is the exclusive developer of AdNectins, a new class of protein therapeutics applicable to a wide range of diseases and targets. The company's initial focus is to develop therapeutics that influence known biologies by designing AdNectins with competitive advantages against validated targets. Because AdNectins are a novel structural class of products they are believed to avoid high intellectual property barriers resulting from patents for traditional protein and small molecule therapeutics.

"The strength of this Series B investment builds on our progress to date in advancing AdNectins and our lead molecule, Angiocept™, toward the clinic", said John Mendlein, Ph.D., CEO of Adnexus Therapeutics. "Venrock has a very successful track record of investing in innovative businesses of distinction. Dr. Hove brings both private and public company experience to Adnexus that will be an asset in executing on our pipeline and business activities. Together with Venrock and our existing investors, we remain focused on one objective - leading the development and commercialization of the next generation of protein therapeutics to produce innovative, vital medicines for patients."

Adnexus Therapeutics intends to use the proceeds from the financing to fund development of its lead product candidate, Angiocept through Phase II clinical development. In addition, Adnexus will continue to advance its pipeline of preclinical product candidates that span multiple disease areas.