A biotechnology company focused on developing treatments for vision loss announced Tuesday it has secured $93 million in Series B funding to advance its pipeline of experimental drugs targeting age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Character Biosciences plans to use the financing to push two key drug candidates into clinical trials this year. The company’s lead program, CTX114, targets geographic atrophy, an advanced form of AMD
characterized by patches of retinal damage that create blind spots. A second drug, CTX203, aims to prevent disease progression in patients with intermediate AMD before they develop more severe complications.
The company is positioning CTX114 as a potential competitor to recently approved treatments Syfovre from Apellis Pharmaceuticals and Izervay from Astellas Pharma. While these existing drugs can slow lesion growth in geographic atrophy patients, their impact on preserving vision remains unclear, and Syfovre has been linked to rare but serious side effects.
According to Character’s co-founder and CEO Cheng Zhang, CTX114 takes a novel approach to modulating the complement system, an immune pathway implicated in AMD. The drug is designed to mimic a naturally occurring protein that regulates complement activation but becomes dysfunctional in AMD patients. Preclinical studies suggest this mechanism could prove more effective than current treatments, though human trials are still needed to validate these findings.
The company’s second candidate, CTX203, targets an earlier disease stage not typically addressed by existing therapies. It works by stabilizing levels of ABCA1, a protein involved in lipid transport in retinal cells. Reduced ABCA1 has been associated with abnormal lipid accumulation that can drive AMD progression.
Zhang noted that developing treatments for dry AMD has historically proven challenging due to the disease’s heterogeneous nature and variable progression patterns. To address this, Character has built an extensive database of patient information to inform drug design and clinical trial strategies, including methods to identify specific patient subgroups most likely to respond to treatment.
The Series B round was co-led by investment firms aMoon and Luma Group, with participation from Bausch + Lomb and Jefferson Life Sciences among other investors. The funding follows a January collaboration agreement between Character and Bausch + Lomb.
Jamie Kasuboski, partner at Luma Group, praised Character’s
patient-focused approach to drug development, particularly its emphasis on identifying optimal treatment candidates through careful patient selection.
The company, which previously operated as Clover Therapeutics when it launched in 2019 under health insurer Clover Health, had raised $28 million in earlier funding according to Zhang. With an estimated 200 million people worldwide affected by AMD, predominantly the dry form, Character aims to address a significant unmet medical need through its targeted therapeutic approach.
The financing positions Character to advance its innovative pipeline targeting both early intervention and treatment of advanced disease, potentially offering new options for patients with limited therapeutic alternatives. The company’s strategy of combining extensive patient data analysis with novel drug mechanisms represents a comprehensive approach to tackling the complexities of AMD treatment.