VC Deals: AbbVie Joins $50M For Inflammatory Disease Treatments

Welcome to Seeking Alpha’s Venture Capital Deals of the Week. Follow this account and turn on the e-mail alert to receive VCDeals in your inbox on Friday afternoons.

AbbVie Ventures (NYSE:ABBV) participated in the $50M Series A for Quench Bio, a company leveraging gasdermin biology and innate immunology to develop medicines for severe inflammatory disease. RA Capital led the round, and Quench co-founders Atlas Venture and Arix Bioscience participated.

Quench Bio's lead therapeutic approach involves inhibiting Gasdermin D, a key target at the core of multiple inflammatory cell death pathways, including pyroptosis and NETosis. When those pathways are activated, gasdermin is processed and forms lytic pores on the cell membrane, allowing the release of inflammatory cytokines, alarmins, DNA, and NETs. Pyroptosis and NETosis are associated with numerous inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis.

“Targeting gasdermin provides a unique therapeutic opportunity, as there are currently no marketed therapies inhibiting inflammatory cell death,” says Quench CEO Samantha Truex, who adds that this approach can “simultaneously inhibit multiple inflammatory cell death pathways that drive severe inflammatory diseases.”

More notable deals this week:

• Reuters sources said that SoftBank Vision Fund II (]]SFTBF]],OTCPK:SFTBY) contributed most of the $250M round for Alto Pharmacy, an online pharmacy that competes with Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) PillPack. Alto delivers to patients in select cities in California, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington. The funding reportedly valued Alto at over $700M.
• Tencent (]]TCEHY]],OTCPK:TCTZF) and Dragoneer co-led the $250M infusion into luxury fashion platform Farfetch. The backers each invested in $125M worth of convertible senior notes issued by the startup. The Farfetch platform includes more than 80 luxury brands on WeChat, including Ralph Lauren, Balenciaga, and Armani. The new funds will help drive Farfetch’s expansion plans and push for operational profitability.
• Visa (NYSE:V) and the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation backed the $60M Series E for Currencycloud, creator of cross-border payment APIs. The startup’s APIs include money collection, outgoing payments, and foreign exchange. Currencycloud says more than $50B has been transferred between 180 countries. The funding will help with Currencycloud’s push into Asia and its new Singapore office.
• Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) led and HPE (NYSE:HPE) joined the $37.5M round for hybrid IT operations platform OpsRamp. The startup’s competitors Nyansa and Loom Systems were recently acquired by VMware (NYSE:VMW) and ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW), respectively. OpsRamp has more than 1,400 customers worldwide and claims to have tripled its ARR last year.
• Samsung NEXT (OTC:SSNNF,OTC:SSNLF) led and M12 (NASDAQ:MSFT) participated in the $20M round for Directly, which has a platform that trains customer service chatbots. The startup plans to use the funds to expand the training platform beyond the customer service vertical. Samsung, Microsoft, and Airbnb are among Directly’s current customers.

Editor's Note: This article discusses one or more securities that do not trade on a major U.S. exchange. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.