InduPro Raises $77 Million as Bispecific ADC Enters First-in-Human Trial

Seattle-based biotech company InduPro has completed a $77 million Series B financing round while also dosing the first participant with its bispecific antibody-drug conjugate, IDP-001. This moves the company’s “protein proximity” concept beyond animal models and into human testing of safety, dosing, and preliminary antitumor activity.

The financing was led by The Column Group, with existing investors Vida Ventures, Merck’s MRL Ventures Fund, Emerson Collective, and Euclidean Capital continuing to participate, alongside new investors Solasta Ventures, Sanofi, and Eli Lilly. InduPro said the funds will be used for the Phase 1 trial of IDP-001, to generate early proof-of-concept data, and to advance other preclinical programs.

IDP-001 is a bispecific ADC that simultaneously targets epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, and a tumor-associated proximity antigen that InduPro calls TAPA-E1. The company hopes that stronger binding will occur only when the two targets are close to each other on the cancer cell surface, thereby increasing drug internalization and tumor selectivity while reducing toxicity caused by attacking normal EGFR-expressing tissues. A previously published AACR research abstract described the target pair as EGFR and CDCP1.

The ongoing open-label Phase 1/2 trial is expected to enroll 132 adults with advanced or metastatic solid tumors, including squamous and non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer, as well as squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck, esophagus, cervix, skin, and anus. The initial dose-escalation stage will assess dose-limiting toxicities and adverse events, followed by evaluation of objective response rate and duration of response in selected cancer types.

Background

EGFR is widely present in many solid tumors, but it is also found in normal tissues. Using EGFR alone to deliver cytotoxic drugs may be limited by safety risks involving the skin, cornea, and other tissues. Rather than searching for a target found exclusively in tumors, InduPro’s strategy is to recognize distinctive protein “neighbor relationships” on the surface of cancer cells and use a dual-target design to improve recognition precision. Animal studies published in 2025 showed that IDP-001 had dose-related activity in tumor models expressing both targets, but no human efficacy or safety data are yet available.

The financing therefore buys time for clinical validation, not a conclusion about efficacy. The company has not disclosed the first patient’s dose, tolerability, or when it expects to release data. ClinicalTrials.gov records updated through May still listed the trial as not yet recruiting and may not yet reflect the latest progress. The next key question is whether dual binding can genuinely widen the separation between tumors and normal tissues in humans and create a therapeutic window sufficient to support subsequent expansion trials.