Fortitude Biomedicines has launched following closing of $13 million in seed financing. Based in Waltham, Mass., the biopharmaceutical company specializes in immune cell-targeting biologics and molecular glue payload-enabled antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).

Those treatments, according to the company, address a wide range of autoimmune diseases and cancers.

Partners in Fortitude Biomedicines Launch

K2 Bio Partners, Shanghai Healthcare Angel Capital, and Elikon Venture co-led the funding. Additional investment came from Everjoy Fortune and Taihill Venture.

Proceeds from the financing support Fortitude’s advancement of its lead immune cell-targeting biologic program through Investigational New Drug (IND) studies.

“Fortitude is at the forefront of a new era in therapeutic innovation,” said Fortitude President and CEO Jesse Chen, PhD. “With proprietary antibody-based technology, we are unlocking the ability to precisely target diseases while engaging the body’s own biology in powerful, transformative ways.”

Fortitude’s Proprietary Technology

Namely, that technology includes the GLUE-DAC drug discovery engine. According to Fortitude, it is a next-generation ADC platform powered by proprietary molecular glue payloads.

Professor Jin Wang, PhD, and his research laboratory developed GLUE-DAC at Baylor College of Medicine. Along with Chen, Wang is a co-founder of Fortitude.

In a press release, Wang illustrated some of the hurdles GLUE-DAC is designed to overcome.

“Resistance is increasingly emerging as a challenge in the current ADC therapeutic landscape,” Wang said. “The field urgently needs payloads with distinct mechanisms of action. GLUE-DAC technology meets this unmet need by combining the validated delivery capabilities of antibodies with the transformative potential of targeted protein degradation.”

“We believe that Fortitude has the potential to become a leading international enterprise in immunotherapy and oncology treatment,” said Yunhai Wang, PhD, managing partner at K2 Bio Partners. He also said that “we look forward to working closely with the company to accelerate the development of its pipeline and bring benefits to patients worldwide.”