Dive Brief:

• Corxel Pharmaceuticals, a New Jersey-based biotechnology company, announced Thursday it raised $287 million in a Series D1 funding round meant to push an obesity drug into further testing. 
• Corxel gained development rights to its lead program, an oral GLP-1 medicine called CX11, from the Chinese drugmaker Vincentage in 2024. CX11 is in mid-stage testing in the U.S. in obese and overweight patients. Vincentage is running a Phase 3 study in China.
• The biotech will launch a global Phase 2 study in type 2 diabetes this year and is making preparations for additional late-stage trials. It’s also evaluating two other drugs licensed from Biogen and PhaseBio, respectively, against acute ischemic stroke and hypertension.

Dive Insight:

Croxel’s financing comes amid a gold rush among drugmakers and biotech investors in the U.S. and Europe to license drugs discovered in China.

Large companies and biotech startup creators have looked across the Pacific Ocean for treatments they can scoop up and quickly move through testing. For venture investors, that blueprint has already yielded success with acquisitions like that of asthma drugmaker Aiolos Bio, which sold in a $1 billion deal in 2023. Several more startups built from China-based assets have sprung up since.

Many of those experimental drugs are being positioned as potentially better versions of drugs either in testing or on the market. Obesity treatments, a fixation of drugmakers in recent years, are a prime example. Startups such as Kailera Therapeutics and Verdiva Bio have been formed around weight loss treatments originating in China’s laboratories, while larger drugmakers such as Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Merck & Co. have licensed assets from China-based counterparts.  

All of those companies acquired GLP-1 pills, which are seen as a way to broaden use of popular obesity medicines and increase patient adherence. Corxel is making a similar pitch. In its statement and on its website, the company has referred to CX11 as a “differentiated” oral therapy that could offer “weight reduction comparable to injectable GLP-1” treatments. Initial data from its mid-stage study of CX11 in the U.S. could come within months, according to a federal database.

Already, there’s early evidence of a big need for the kind of pills Corxel and its rivals are developing. The Food and Drug Administration approved an oral form of Wegovy last month, and initial prescription numbers suggest the drug is off to a fast start. A GLP-1 pill from Eli Lilly could join it on the market shortly. 

Investors in Corxel’s Series D1 round included SR One, TCGX, RA Capital Management and at least seven others. RTW Investments and Hengdian Group Capital, which backed previous fundings, both participated in the company’s latest venture round.

“This investment is one of the most significant milestones for Corxel since its founding as it not only fuels our effort to accelerate the global development of industry-leading therapies against cardiometabolic diseases but also propels the company to a new orbit of growth,” Sandy Mou, Corxel’s CEO, said in a statement.

Corxel was founded by RTW in 2019 and is known in China as Ji Xing Pharmaceuticals. It previously licensed from Cytokinetics partial rights to a heart drug now known as Myqorzo, before selling them to Sanofi in 2024.