Eluminex Biosciences Announces Closing of $50 Million Series A Financing
China-based Eluminex Biosciences announced the completion of a $50 million Series A Financing, which will be used to develop a pipeline addressing critical unmet medical needs in vision-threatening diseases for patients.
The financing was co-led by Lilly Asia Ventures, GL Ventures (venture capital arm of Hillhouse Capital), and Quan Capital. The Eluminex headquarters and research and development center are located in Suzhou Industrial Park; the business center is based in Shanghai, and future plans include establishing a global clinical and registration center in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“We greatly appreciate the profound level of support and trust from three global investors,” Jinzhong Zhang, PhD, Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, said in a company news release. “With these proceeds, our goal is to build an innovative pipeline addressing critical unmet medical needs in vision-threatening diseases for patients worldwide. Additionally, we are pleased to have three world-renowned professors of ophthalmology as members of our Scientific Advisory Board: Quan Dong Nguyen, MD, MSc (Stanford University), Zuguo Liu, MD, PhD (Xiamen University), and Xiaodong Sun, MD, PhD (Shanghai Jiao Tong University). We are grateful for their significant contributions in helping us develop our pipeline programs.”
The company also announced that Charles Semba, MD, has joined Eluminex as Chief Medical Officer (CMO). Dr. Semba is an internationally recognized leader in ophthalmic drug development. He has served as CMO in three prior ophthalmic companies: SARcode Bioscience (acquired by Shire/Takeda), ForSight VISION5 (acquired by Allergan), and Graybug Vision. He has held senior leadership roles as Vice President Ophthalmic Medicine at Shire/Takeda and Ophthalmology Group Head at Genentech. Dr. Semba led the clinical development of ranibizumab (Lucentis), the first global blockbuster anti-VEGF agent to reverse blindness in wet age-related macular degeneration and lifitegrast (Xiidra), the first novel agent for the treatment of both signs and symptoms of dry eye disease; Xiidra; was acquired by Novartis for over $5 billion (USD).