Pinnacle Medicines, a biotechnology company headquartered in Shanghai and Doylestown, Pennsylvania, focused on oral peptide drug development, has closed an oversubscribed USD 89 million Series B financing round. The company, which is building a computational and chemistry-driven platform to design orally delivered peptide therapeutics, has now raised USD 134 million to date following incubation by OrbiMed and other healthcare-focused investors.
The round was co-led by LAV and Foresite Capital, with participation from Quan Capital, Hankang Capital, RA Capital Management, Logos Capital, and existing investors including OrbiMed. The company said proceeds will support advancement of its lead programs through clinical proof of concept, with an initial focus on immunology and cardiometabolic diseases, while also expanding its proprietary peptide discovery platform and research and development capabilities.
Pinnacle is developing oral peptide therapeutics designed to achieve biologic-level efficacy through oral dosing. The company's proprietary platform integrates three components: physics-based molecular simulations that model peptide behavior at the atomic level, artificial intelligence-enabled design tools that accelerate optimization of drug-like properties, and advanced peptide chemistry techniques intended to confer resistance to enzymatic degradation and enhance intestinal absorption. The rationale underlying this integration is that no single computational or chemical approach alone has proven sufficient to reliably produce orally bioavailable peptides, and the combination of all three may allow systematic generation of candidates that combine the target specificity of biologics with the convenience of oral administration.