ResTOR­bio, a new com­pa­ny de­vel­op­ing tech spun out of No­var­tis, has raised $40 mil­lion in a Se­ries B round to speed its an­ti-ag­ing pro­gram through the clin­ic.

The start­up, which was set up ear­li­er this year as a sub­sidiary of Boston-based PureTech Health, has brought in $65 mil­lion since its in­cep­tion. The mon­ey will be used to ad­vance the com­pa­ny’s lead im­munother­a­py pro­gram meant to re­duce res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tions in el­der­ly sub­jects, which is al­ready in Phase IIb. Re­sults are ex­pect­ed next year.

Chen Schor

Left­over funds will al­so be used to start a study in an ad­di­tion­al ag­ing-re­lat­ed dis­ease, al­though resTOR­bio did not share the de­tails.

“We be­lieve our ap­proach may pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress mul­ti­ple ag­ing-re­lat­ed dis­eases be­yond our ini­tial in­di­ca­tion for re­duc­ing the in­ci­dence of res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tions in the el­der­ly,” said pres­i­dent and CEO Chen Schor in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny in-li­censed its lead pro­gram, called RTB101, from the No­var­tis In­sti­tute of Bio­Med­ical Re­search back in March. RTB101 tar­gets the ra­pamycin com­plex 1 (mTORC1) path­way. To start, resTOR­bio plans on de­vel­op­ing med­i­cines that ad­dress im­munose­nes­cence, the de­cline in im­mune func­tion due to ag­ing.

Ag­ing has been a grow­ing fo­cus among a hand­ful of biotechs, though there are still plen­ty of pesky de­tails about de­vel­op­ment and end­points that need to be worked out with the FDA. Still, this is an ad­vanced ef­fort, es­pe­cial­ly com­pared to cell senes­cence pro­grams at star­tups like Uni­ty.

Jonathan Sil­ver­stein

The cash from this new round main­ly comes from Or­biMed Ad­vi­sors, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Fi­deltiy, Rock Springs Cap­i­tal, Quan Cap­i­tal, and Nest Bio.

With the mon­ey comes new board mem­ber Jonathan Sil­ver­stein, part­ner and a co-head of Glob­al Pri­vate Eq­ui­ty at Or­biMed.