Samsung Life Science invests in US biotech firm Latus Bio

Samsung Life Science Fund, managed by Samsung Group’s venture investment arm, has invested in US biotechnology firm Latus Bio Inc. during the latter’s Series A funding round raising $54 million, according to the US company’s press release on Thursday.

Samsung Life Science Fund was formed through joint investments by Samsung Biologics Co., Samsung Bioepis Co. and Samsung C&T Corp. and managed by their affiliated investment arm Samsung Venture Investment Corp.

It did not disclose the life science fund’s total investment in Latus but the American biotech company said that the Korean investors joined its Series A funding that was closed with an initial investment of $54 million as a syndicate partner. Its lead investors are 8VC and DCVC Bio.

The latest investment comes about a month after the fund invested in US-based antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and gene therapy biotechnology company BrickBio.

The Korean fund has actively invested in other gene therapy-developing biotech companies at home and abroad, including Jaguar Gene Therapy and Senda Biosciences in the US, Switzerland-based Araris Biotech and Korea-headquartered Aimedbio.

Samsung Group has chosen gene therapy as a new growth engine for its medical units.  

NOVEL GENE THERAPY DEVELOPER

Latus is a Philadelphia-based biotechnology company that develops novel gene therapy candidates for central nervous system (CNS) disorders, using its proprietary technologies, used to identify and engineer novel adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsid variants.

With the proceedings from the latest funding round, the US company hopes to accelerate the development of its gene therapies for CLN2 disease, a rare neurodegenerative genetic disease affecting children in early life, and Huntington’s disease, an inherited disorder causing nerve cells, or neurons, in parts of the brain to gradually break down and die, Latus Chief Executive Office P. Peter Ghoroghchian said in the press statement.

The company plans the first-in-human dosing of its CLN2 disease therapy candidate in late 2025.

Samsung Bioepis highly praised Latus’s novel AAV capsid variants engineering technology, a critical part of AAV technology, said Cho Ho-sung, the Korean company’s executive vice president and head of its Early Research and Development unit.

AAVs are widely used as gene-delivery vehicles for various medicines and a key technology in gene therapy.

In January, Samsung Biologics President & CEO John Rim said the company was considering its advance into the AAV sector in the contract drug development business.

The world’s top contract manufacturing organization (CMO) by capacity under Samsung Group is building its fifth plant, which will offer multimodal product services, on its new second campus in Songdo.

The upcoming plant with an annual capacity of 180,000 liters is said to be housing facilities that produce AAV-based gene therapies.

Samsung Bioepis is Samsung’s biopharmaceutical research and development unit, while Samsung C&T is the group’s de facto holding company engaging in the construction, trading and leisure businesses.

Samsung Venture Investment invests mainly in startups and established companies in the semiconductor, telecommunication, software, internet, bioengineering and medical industries.

Write to Dae-Kyu Ahn at powerzanic@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.