From my colleague Drew Joseph: Just a few months after its unveiling, the startup Ottimo Pharma said Thursday it had raised a $140 million Series A round, a hefty sum that reflects the biopharma’s industry excitement around the targets Ottimo’s going after with its experimental cancer therapy. 

The financing was led by OrbiMed, Avoro Capital, and Samsara BioCapital, with other investors, including Medicxi, which had backed the pre-clinical development of Ottimo’s medicine, also pitching in. 

Ottimo’s antibody, called jankistomig, is designed to work by targeting two proteins, PD-1 and VEGF, both rallying the body’s own immune fighters to attack tumors while preventing cancer cells from spurring the growth of new blood vessels. The industry’s interest in the approach exploded earlier this year when Summit Therapeutics and Akeso reported that their bispecific antibody outperformed Merck’s Keytruda in a head-to-head trial. Since then, Merck has licensed its own bispecific. Other companies are also working on their own versions of the approach.

Ottimo, which is based in London and Boston, is headed by David Epstein, a longtime Novartis executive who most recently led Seagen as it was acquired by Pfizer. Epstein has been upfront about the company’s goal to generate such promising early clinical data that it can attract a larger company to scoop it up.

from Endpoints (about financing, regulations, etc)