On April 6, 2026 Stipple Bio, Inc., a private biotechnology company harnessing epitope-level precision to create targeted cancer therapies, reported the close of a $100 million heavily oversubscribed Series A financing. The financing was co-led by RA Capital, a16z Bio+Health and Nextech Invest, and includes participation from existing investors Emerson Collective Investments (managed by Yosemite), GV (Google Ventures), LoLa Capital Partners and GordonMD Global Investments, among others. In conjunction with the financing, Derek DiRocco, PhD and Thilo Schroeder, PhD will join the Stipple Bio Board of Directors which already includes Vineeta Agarwala MD, PhD, Owen Hughes, Jeff Landau and Aaron Ring MD, PhD and Greg Verdine, PhD.
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The proceeds from the financing, which should fund the company into 2029, will be used to advance its lead candidate, STP-100, into multiple early-stage clinical studies, and to leverage its Pointillist Platform to identify additional tumor-specific cell surface epitopes enabling the development of additional pipeline candidates with a high therapeutic index.
"We are building upon deep cancer biology expertise to map, target and unlock tumor-specific epitopes which enable us to develop a pipeline of next-generation precision oncology therapeutics," said Jeff Landau, Chief Executive Officer of Stipple Bio. "This funding positions us to progress STP-100 into the clinic and continue building a broad oncology pipeline. I am extremely pleased to have the support of industry-leading investors who share our enthusiasm towards developing precision and differentiated cancer therapies based on our modality-agnostic Pointillist Platform."
"Clinical experience with prior antibody drugs has taught us that epitope-level specificity matters. Since the earliest days of Stipple Bio, we’ve been impressed by the team’s vision to move beyond tumor-specific gene expression and to pioneer tumor-specific ‘epitomics’ in precision oncology. We are proud to have supported Stipple Bio since inception and to co-lead this financing as the company advances safer, more effective therapies for patients living with cancer," said Dr. Agarwala, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and lead investor for the a16z Bio+Health Fund.
"Stipple Bio’s Pointillist Platform introduces an epitope-level approach to targeting tumor biology that has the potential to meaningfully expand the set of druggable oncology targets. Lead candidate STP-100 illustrates how this strategy can drive precise tumor targeting while sparing normal tissues—a key step toward improving therapeutic index in ADCs. We are excited to partner with the team as they advance STP-100 into the clinic and build a broader pipeline from the platform," said Dr. DiRocco, Partner at RA Capital Management.
Stipple Bio was founded in 2022 by cancer biology pioneers Dr. Aaron Ring, Associate Professor, Translational Science and Therapeutics Division at Fred Hutch, and Dr. Aashish Manglik, Associate Professor, Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF, both of whom believed that targeting tumor-specific cell surface epitopes could improve therapeutic index and unlock targets previously intractable with conventional oncology drug discovery methods. a16z Bio+Health, Emerson Collective Investments (managed by Yosemite) and OMX provided Stipple Bio’s initial Seed financing.
(Press release, Stipple Bio, APR 6, 2026, View Source [SID1234664197])