In biotech, velocity is the difference between headlines and obituaries. Move too slow, competitors eat your lunch. Move too fast, regulators send you home. Avenzo Therapeutics is threading that needle with surgical precision. Founded in August 2022, the San Diego player is barely out of its startup diapers, yet it has raised a staggering $446 million to date. The latest move: a $60 million Series B announced September 22, led by OrbiMed and SR One with Longwood Fund stepping in and a wall of loyalists returning, Foresite Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, Surveyor Capital, NEA, Deep Track Capital, Sofinnova Investments, Sands Capital, INCE Capital, TF Capital, Delos Capital, and Quan Capital. That cap table reads like the biotech Avengers assembling.
The founders are no rookies. Athena Countouriotis, M.D., turned Turning Point Therapeutics from IPO debut into a $4.1 billion acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb. Mohammad Hirmand, M.D., helped shepherd XTANDI at Medivation to FDA approval before leading clinical at Peloton and Turning Point. Together, they designed Avenzo as a lean but ferocious clinical-stage engine. Add Paolo Tombesi as CFO, Brian Sun as Chief Legal Officer, Scott Lipman as Chief Business Officer, Homa Yeganegi steering medical affairs, and Ryan Bloomer running CMC, and the org chart starts looking less like a startup and more like a championship roster.
The output speaks for itself. In 2025 alone, Avenzo snagged three FDA IND clearances and expanded from one to four clinical-stage programs. AVZO-021, a selective CDK2 inhibitor, is in trials across the U.S. and Australia. AVZO-023, a selective CDK4 candidate, launched Phase 1/2 studies in June. The duo is designed to play tag-team in HR+/HER2-negative breast cancer, aiming to outmaneuver resistance mechanisms that blunt current treatments. On the ADC front, AVZO-1418 is an EGFR/HER3 bispecific targeting lung, breast, and head cancer and neck cancers, while AVZO-103, licensed from VelaVigo, is a Nectin4/TROP2 bispecific gearing up for Phase 1/2 later this year.
Series B funding isn’t just fuel for trials, it’s the amplifier for Avenzo’s strategy: pairing differentiated CDK inhibitors with ADC innovation to reshape solid tumor treatment. The Gilead partnership evaluating AVZO-021 with Trodelvy shows they’re not building in a silo, while the VelaVigo licensing deal with up to $800 million in potential milestones proves the business model has teeth. With just 29 employees and 6,178 LinkedIn followers, the company already punches above its weight.
