Ligature Therapeutics secures US$6 million seed financing

 KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 5 -- Ligature Therapeutics Pte Ltd, an early-stage biotech company has announced the close of US$6 million in seed round funding. (US$1 = RM4.012)

The financing, led by Lightstone Ventures, with the participation of Enterprise Singapore’s investment arm, SEEDS Capital, will be used to build out the team and advance Ligature’s platform technology.

Lightstone Singapore L.P. co-founded Ligature in 2020 with its scientific founders Alvin Hung, PhD; Thomas Keller, PhD; and Congbao Kang, PhD to take a novel approach to designing small molecules capable of degrading disease-causing proteins.

According to a statement, Drs Hung, Keller and Kang are from the Experimental Drug Discovery Centre (EDDC), a national platform hosted by A*STAR for drug discovery and development.

“Lightstone Singapore is committed to building companies based on innovative life science-related technologies developed in Singapore,” said Lightstone Singapore Chief Executive Officer, Kenneth D. Noonan.

“By working with highly motivated scientists like Alvin, Thomas and Congbao, we hope to build globally competitive drug discovery companies.”

Meanwhile, SEEDS Capital Chairman, Ted Tan said: “We will continue to work with top-tier investors to build and support deep tech startups such as Ligature, to grow the local biotech sector and further strengthen Singapore's position as a regional Pharmbio hub.”

Ligature has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with EDDC to develop its protein degrader platform.

-- BERNAMA