Firm is focused on leveraging structure-based knowledge to develop protein therapeutics.

Eleven Biotherapeutics completed a $35 million Series A financing round co-led by Flagship Ventures and Third Rock Ventures. The firm says it will use the funds to build its R&D and business development teams and progress its pipeline of engineered proteins through clinical proof of concept.

Eleven Bio’s pipeline is currently focused on inflammatory diseases and coagulation disorders and is currently at the candidate-selection stage. The firm is exploiting the latest understanding of structure-based protein domain function together with protein design to develop new protein-based therapeutics.

The company’s approach to building its pipeline involves a combination of drug development strategies centered on core pipeline products with clinically validated targets and mechanisms, applied research projects with novel therapeutic pathways and targets, and the acquisition of clinical-stage compounds that complement its other areas of research.

“Rapid advances in our understanding of processes that govern autoimmunity, such as the contributions of the Th17 pathway and its associated cytokines to inflammatory disorders, have presented new opportunities for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases,” states Casey T. Weaver, M.D., one of Eleven Bio’s scientific co-founders and the Wyatt and Susan Haskell professor of medical excellence in the department of pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Eleven Biotherapeutics is well positioned to take a leading role in structure-based design and development of biologics that target key molecules of this pathway.”

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