Glympse Bio Secures $46.7 Million Series B Financing

Cambridge-based Glympse Bio has closed an oversubscribed $46.7 million Series B financing. The proceeds from the financing will support continued development of Glympse’s novel biosensor platform in fibrotic diseases such as Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), oncology, and infectious diseases.

NASH is a disease that impacts 16 million people in the U.S. and 100 million worldwide. The bioengineered, tunable sensors will be used to determine clinical trial participants’ stage of disease at initial screening and to determine response to treatment in PMA enabling NASH studies. The biosensors avoid the difficulties seen with needle liver biopsy by providing a safe, repeatable, noninvasive measure of disease activity directly at the liver, thereby potentially predicting the stage of NASH in a patient long before histopathology changes become visible and enabling serial monitoring of treatment progress. Glympse completed first-in-human studies with their NASH product earlier this year.

In addition to the NASH studies, the Series B funding will support further development of the company’s oncology program and initiate development of the infectious disease program. According to Wendy Winckler, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, “…We are paving the way to improve the continuum of care for NASH and build a comprehensive understanding of the disease trajectory that doesn’t currently exist. In oncology, we can directly track tumor progression at the site of disease and measure its response to treatment across a broad range of immunotherapies, targeted therapies, and other standards-of-care. This funding enables us to continue the development of our current programs and expand the application of our platform into new therapeutic indications.”

Founded in 2015 as a MIT spin-out from the laboratory of Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, Glympse is transforming the measurement of disease progression in vivo using bioengineered, tunable sensors that are designed for each protease-mediated disease. In October 2019, Glympse announced a strategic collaboration with Gilead Sciences to evaluate Glympse’s technology as both a diagnostic and prognostic tool. (Source: Glympse Bio Website, 15 July, 2020)