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Endpoint Health, which specializes in the discovery and development of immune-mediated acute and chronic disease therapeutics announced today it has raised $52 million in a debt and equity financing which will be used to extend the company’s Precision-First platform and expand its therapeutic pipeline. Major investors in the Series A round included Mayfield, Humboldt Fund, AME Cloud Ventures, Boom Capital, Alix Ventures, Yaya Capital, Wireframe Ventures, The Venture Collective, HCX Ventures and Global Health Investment Corporation (GHIC).

“This funding provides us with additional resources to accelerate our mission to deliver precision therapies to patients with acute and chronic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases,” said Jason Springs, co-founder and CEO of Endpoint Health in a press release. “We combine AI, therapeutics, and therapy-guiding tests to rewrite the molecule-first drug development model. We are creating a new approach with the goal of bringing the promise of precision therapeutics to immunology.”

Additionally, the company said it will use a portion of the proceeds to advance its first precision therapy, Antithrombin III, into a Phase II clinical trial for the treatment of sepsis, for which Endpoint anticipates filing an Investigation New Drug (IND) application and Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) to the FDA later this year. Endpoint Health previously announced of a global collaboration and licensing agreement with Grifols to develop and commercialize Antithrombin III in sepsis.

Endpoint Health’s focus on immune-mediated diseases addresses both a large unmet need for therapeutics, as well as a significant market opportunity. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) immune-mediated chronic diseases affect between 5% and 7% of the world’s population while immune-mediated acute diseases affect roughly 14% of people around the globe. Sepsis, the focus of the Antithrombin clinical program, has few effective treatments and is responsible for an estimated one-in-five deaths worldwide the WHO says.

The opportunity in chronic immune-mediated diseases is equally significant the company noted, affecting nearly half a billion people worldwide. One such common condition, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), sees half of the diagnosed patients fail to respond to any of the currently approved medications.

Endpoint says its approach for precision medicine is guided not by a “molecule-first” approach to drug development. Rather, it starts with gaining an understanding of the unique biology of each patient suffering from an immune-mediated condition. It’s Precision-first approach starts with an aggregation of de-identified patient genomic data and real-world data from electronic health records, then applies proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to identify biologically distinct patient immune-state subgroups. Using these data, the company says it can both match patients with the correct treatments while also developing therapy-guiding diagnostics and therapeutics aimed at these individual conditions.

“Endpoint Health’s precision approach to deeply understand the immune state of patients and use that knowledge to develop precision therapies is exactly the type of innovation we search for,” noted Charlie Petty, partner at GHIC, which recently announced a venture capital partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to accelerate the development and commercialization of technologies to address global public health emergencies. “Our mission, supported by our unique relationship with BARDA and other strategic partners, is to support life sciences companies with the vision to transform health security. With its proprietary AI platform and an experienced leadership team with a track record of success in both diagnostics and therapeutics, Endpoint Health is well-positioned to develop new precision therapies for patients in need.”

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