Ahammune Biosciences, a Pune-based biotech start-up firm, has reportedly announced securing an undisclosed amount in a Pre-Series A round led by Indian Angel Network and Ideaspring Capital.
In line with the above mentioned organizations, an ex-Pfizer member, Ajith Kamath, Kotak Private Equity, and legacy Assets LLP, have also participated in the funding round. More so, Ganesh Natarajan also currently serves as an existing investor for the Company. Important, Ahammune has been in receipt of funding grant from BIRAC.
Reports suggest that the fresh capital would be used for ‘first-in human’ studies with Ahammune’s new drug candidate AB1001 for vitiligo. Moreover, the study would constitute Phase-I safety studies in healthy human volunteers and Phase-2 efficiency studies in patients suffering from vitiligo.
For the uninitiated, vitiligo is a skin depigmentation disorder and has a global prevalence of 1 to 2 per cent. Moreover, the disease burden in the Indian states is relatively higher than in other countries with an incidence rate of 8 per cent.
This apart, the company would also make use of these funds in building the patent portfolio to strengthen the R&D efforts.
Commenting on the latest fund-raise, Co-Founder and CEO of Ahammune Biosciences, Parul Ganju stated that there is currently no cure for vitiligo globally. However, the company’s drug is looking forward to fulfilling the unaddressed need in Vitiligo treatment.
Parul mentioned that the firm has positioned the AB1001 drug candidate as a breakthrough solution, a segment of the market that accounted for 45 per cent of the overall market share of all the available options. Furthermore, Ahammune’s preclinical data suggests that the novel drug candidate emerges out to be a safe option and is able to curb the spread of repigment white patches and depigmentation in animal models.
It was also mentioned that based on the recent studies, the first intended use of drug would be in patients with non-segmental vitiligo, that is, who have active vitiligo.