Dive Brief:
- Ollin Biosciences, a startup focused on eye diseases, raised $330 million in a Series B financing, drawing in a range of new investors as the company prepares to move its lead experimental medicine into Phase 3 testing in the second half.
- Founding investor Arch Venture Partners co-led the funding round with new investor TCGX, Ollin said Wednesday. Accounts advised by T. Rowe Price also participated, along with firms including Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, RA Capital Management and Monograph Capital.
- The proceeds will support pivotal research of OLN324, a drug designed to combat leading causes of vision loss. A Phase 1b study suggested that OLN324 may be more potent with longer-lasting effects than Roche’s Vabysmo, which was approved in 2022 and has been taking share away from the longtime market leader Eylea, sold by Regeneron.
Dive Insight:
Ollin is part of a wave of startups built on medicines licensed from China, where lower costs and a more flexible regulatory climate have sparked a biotechnology boom. The company is working with Innovent Biologics, a popular partner in the industry, on OLN324 and plans to take a second drug, OLN102, into the clinic this year in a collaboration with VelaVigo focused on thyroid eye disease and Graves’ disease.
The embrace of Chinese biotech has caused concern that U.S. companies are falling behind and possibly transferring critical know-how that could endanger national security. Two House lawmakers recently proposed a bill to crack down on Chinese biotech deals. And federal health officials on Monday released a plan to speed up early U.S. clinical trials in hopes of chipping away at one of China’s main advantages.
Like many of the companies built on Chinese licensing deals, Ollin aims to market medicines that improve on established options. OLN102 is a would-be competitor for Amgen’s Tepezza, designed to potentially offer better efficacy and fewer side effects. With OLN324, Ollin is aiming to take on Vabysmo in the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema.
The potential opportunity for OLN324 is huge. After less than four full years on the market, Vabysmo brought in 4.1 billion Swiss francs, or about $5 billion, in 2025 for Roche. But all of the medicines vying for market share are facing increased competition from cheaper copycat versions of Eylea, including one from Amgen that launched in 2024.
Ollin’s financing round is one of the larger rounds in the industry this year, according to BioPharma Dive data. Ollin may be preparing to follow in the footsteps of companies like Kailera Therapeutics, which used its Chinese-built pipeline to go public in one the sector’s biggest-ever initial public offerings.
An IPO is “one type of future financing potentially available to us,” CEO Jason Ehrlich wrote in an email to BioPharma Dive. But “right now, our priority is execution: generating strong clinical data and advancing our programs. If and when the public markets represent the right opportunity for the company, we'll be well positioned for that path.”
