Biotech Firm Degron Therapeutics Nets USD 22 Mn in Series A Financing Round

Recently, Degron Therapeutics (Chinese: 达歌生物医药) announced its completion of the Series A financing round worth USD 22 million led by Med-Fine Capital (Chinese: 幂方健康基金), with participation from DYEE Capital (Chinese: 德屹资本), Baidu Venture and Xinhang Capital (Chinese: 芯航资本). Investors from its Seed funding including Co-win Ventures (Chinese: 东凯风创投) and Bio Venture (Chinese: 元生创投) also participated in this deal. 

The proceeds will be used to accelerate the development of product pipelines and expand the construction of its molecular glue discovery platform.

Degron Therapeutics was founded in 2021 by Zhou Lihui, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Degreon Therapeutics and Cang Yong, PhD, Chieft Scientific Officer of Degreon Therapeutics. It focuses on developing small molecule molecular glue degrader (MGD) drugs. 

Dr. Zhou previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Fosun Pharma USA with intensive experience both in the research and management of pharma companies. Dr Cang is a specialist in developing MGD drugs with over 20 years’ experience in the relevant field. 

Molecular glues have been extensively explored in the targeted protein degradation field to treat cancers, inflammatory diseases and other chronic disease due to their small-molecule size and good druggability. Compared to small molecule inhibtors which directly interact with targeted proteins, molecular glues are able to induce targeted protein degradation without developing resistance in the patients. Meanwhile, molecular glues do not require a drugable pocket on the protein of interest, allowing them to target more difficult-to-drug proteins. 

Degron Therapeutics’s global competitors are GluBio Pharmaceutical (Chinese: 格博生物), Seed Therapeutics, the subsidiary of BeyondSpring Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: BYSI) and Proxygen.