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Light Horse Therapeutics has galloped on to the biotech scene with $62m in Series A financing and a multi-target collaboration with Novartis that will see the big pharma company use the new biotech’s drug discovery platform.
The Series A was led by founding investor Versant Ventures with participation from Mubadala Capital, Bristol Myers Squibb, Taiho Ventures, and AbbVie, as per a 9 January press release.
The news comes as Light Horse announced a partnership with Novartis in a deal that involves the former receiving a $25m upfront payment. The US-based company is also in line for $1bn in milestone payments, as well as royalties on products that make it to market.
Light Horse says it “turns conventional drug discovery on its head” by pursuing a function-first approach with its genetic editing-based platform. The biotech’s technology uncovers novel functional sites in targets associated with diseases and then screening for chemistry. The biotech has already created several preclinical programmes in oncology indications with its platform.
Other details of the Novartis collaboration were not disclosed, with Light Horse saying only that it will work with the big pharma company to “identify and develop potentially first-in-class therapeutics” using the biotech’s platform.
Novartis’ head of discovery sciences John Tallarico said: “Light Horse’s high-calibre team has built a cutting-edge discovery platform that rapidly enables the exploration of core biological areas of interest, the identification of novel targets and the functionalisation of high-value targets.”
Light Horse has not specifically disclosed which disease indications the company will focus on, saying only it will start by targeting the oncology space.
Light Horse CEO Markus Renschler said: “Our initial focus addresses high-value, historically challenging oncology targets with the opportunity to apply the technology to other therapeutic areas in the future.”
Versant Ventures has 37 healthcare companies listed as “current” in its portfolio, as per its website. The venture capital firm’s most recent pharma-based launch before Light Horse was Borealis Biosciences – a company developing RNA-based medicines for kidney disease – with $150m in August 2024. Novartis was again heavily involved at the time, participating in the Series A financing and committing up to $100m in research funding.
One of Versant’s most successful creations was Chinook Therapeutics, also a kidney disease-speciality pharma company. Novartis acquired the company for $3.5bn in 2023, four years after the biotech was founded.