Singapore-based healthtech startup Hummingbird Bioscience had successfully secured US$19 million in a funding round co-led by Mirae Asset Venture Investment, a South Korea-based venture capital firm specializing in buyout, growth, incubation and cross-border investments, and GNTech Venture Capital, which is the corporate venture investment arm of Kooksoondang Brewery that has a focus on the electronic components sector such as semiconductors, it recently announced. The biotherapeutics startup’s funding round was also participated by existing investors in SEEDS Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, and Heritas Capital Management, a Singapore-based private equity firm with a focus on education, technology and healthcare sectors. Several new investors were also involved in the Series B funding round, including Mirae Asset Capital, HB Investment, DA Value-GiltEdge, Delian Capital, Kiwoom Investment-Shinhan Capital and Wooshin Venture Investment. Thus far, the healthtech startup has acquired more than US$60 million in funds from various fundraising channels and strategic partnerships.
Hummingbird Bioscience said that the freshly acquired funds will be used to further accelerate the ongoing collaborative efforts and work of its joint-discovery projects with Amgen as outlined in the multi-target strategic partnership agreement declared by both parties earlier this year. Besides that, the proceeds from its latest round of financing will be used to detect and identify new disease targets, and also to enable the healthtech startup to further develop and expand its comprehensive system and lineup of high-quality, world-class antibody therapeutics. After complying with regulations and submission guidelines and ensuring that everything is in order, Hummingbird Bioscience is also expecting its existing lead portfolio assets, HMBD-001 and HMBD-002, to undergo first-in-human clinical trials for the foreseeable future.
On their firm’s strategic partnership with Hummingbird Bioscience, Jae Joon Kim, who is Mirae Asset Venture Investment’s managing director, said that the healthtech startup has managed to develop a rational-based systems biology scientific platform that is capable of deploying precision medicine through its generation of therapeutic antibodies, which can be used to effectively combat elusive, highly sought-after targets. The venture capital firm is solidly behind Hummingbird Bioscience’s efforts and believes in the startup’s capabilities of developing advanced treatments that can significantly affect the health prospects of serious-illness patients for the better, and are glad to cooperate with the company’s experienced team and other investor partners.
According to Dr. Piers Ingram, co-founder and chief executive officer of Hummingbird Bioscience, the latest round of financing for the healthtech startup, which saw the participation of many renowned investors and venture capital firms, is an ardent validation and approval of the biotherapeutics company’s innovative and progressive scientific developments and achievements, as well as its transformational and far-sighted goal for the development of more effective and successful medicines for the foreseeable future. Dr. Ingram also noted that the healthtech startup is positioned as a leading player in the field of biotherapeutics due to the vast experience and expertise of their world-leading team comprising of medical professionals and expert biologists hailing from across the globe, as well as its world-class trove of data science technologies.
Elaborating further, Dr. Ingram said that their meticulous and steadfast approach has yielded impressive results as they are able to ascertain the identity of heretofore stubborn and problematic targets, which has allowed them to develop antibodies that are specially tailored for overcoming these strenuous quarry. This is also reflected in their two leading portfolio assets of HMBD-001 and HMBD-002, which are in the process of entering their first-in-human clinical trials aided by the firm backing and assistance from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas and Cancer Research UK, which are both world-class leading health organizations.
Dr. Ingram says that Hummingbird Bioscience, the visionary biotherapeutics startup, will use the fresh funds to continue progress on the swift expansion of their pipeline of potential drugs that are capable of treating a myriad range of illnesses and diseases. This will also help fulfill the company’s goal of inspiring optimism in cancer patients.
