Lawyers at international legal practice Osborne Clarke have advised Amphista Therapeutics, a leader in next generation targeted protein degradation (TPD) approaches, on its £38 million Series B financing round.

The round was co-led by Forbion and Gilde Healthcare, with additional investors Novartis Venture Fund, and Eli Lilly and Company joining existing investor BioMotiv and founding investor Advent Life Sciences. 

The investment proceeds will be used to accelerate the company’s growing pipeline of potent and selective bifunctional molecules, known as Amphistas, to the clinic and to extend its proprietary TPD  platform.

The Osborne Clarke team was led by partner Justin Starling, with associate director Elizabeth Yell and paralegal Fern Tawera in the corporate team, all of whom are based in the firm's Thames Valley office in Reading. The team also included associate director Chris Pratt, from the IP team. 

Amphista Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company creating first-in-class therapeutics that harness the body’s natural processes to selectively and efficiently degrade and remove disease-causing proteins. Based at Chapelhall in North Lanarkshire, the company’s pipeline of novel targeted protein degradation (TPD) based medicines is focused on challenging diseases including cancer. 

Founded by Advent Life Sciences, Amphista is a spin-out of TPD expert Professor Alessio Ciulli’s labs at the University of Dundee. The company has raised around £45 million to date and is funded by leading life science investors including Forbion, Gilde Healthcare, Novartis Venture Fund, Advent Life Sciences, BioMotiv and Eli Lilly and Company.

Justin Starling said: “Having acted for Amphista prior to and through its Series A it was a real pleasure to advise on this Series B round by an outstanding life sciences investor syndicate, showing the strength of Amphista’s team and their work towards delivering ground-breaking new medicines.”

Osborne Clarke has a market-leading international venture capital practice and is widely recognised as a leading European law firm for companies operating in the life science and healthcare sector. The venture capital team is ranked tier one by The Legal 500 and has experts across London, the Thames Valley and Bristol. It has an outstanding track record advising start-ups, global market leaders, angel investors and institutional VC/growth capital investors on funding rounds, follow-on rounds, venture debt facilities, IPOs, trade sales and buy and build projects.