New Investment in Monte Rosa Therapeutics

LEI: 549300Q7EXQQH6KF7Z84

12 March 2021

RTW Venture Fund Limited

New Investment in Monte Rosa Therapeutics

RTW Participates in $95 Million Financing Round in Monte Rosa Therapeutics

RTW Venture Fund Limited (the "Company"), the London Stock Exchange-listed investment company focused on identifying transformative assets with high growth potential across the life sciences sector, is pleased to note the announcement by Monte Rosa Therapeutics, Inc. ("Monte Rosa") on 12 March 2021 of its completion of a $95 million Series C financing round.

The Company, alongside other investment vehicles of RTW Investments, LP (the "Investment Manager"), confirms that it participated in the financing round together with other investment firms.

Monte Rosa is a privately held preclinical-stage biotech company discovering and developing small molecule degraders (also known as molecular glues) to eliminate disease-causing proteins. Monte Rosa plans to use the proceeds from the financing round to advance its lead development candidate into the clinic, accelerate pipeline growth and bolster its platform capabilities.

Roderick Wong, MD, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at the Investment Manager, said:

"We are delighted to support Monte Rosa's work in targeted protein degradation, a new class of small-molecule drugs, and advancement of their pipeline into IND-enabling studies, as well as the broad application potential of its platform to create transformative therapies across multiple therapeutic indications."

The Company's investment in Monte Rosa marks its fifth portfolio addition in 2021. The Investment Manager is looking forward to growing the Company's investment pipeline and updating shareholders on further opportunities in due course.

Monte Rosa's announcement can be accessed on its website at: www.monterosatx.com, the full text of which is contained below.  

For Further Information

RTW Investments, LP                                    +1 (646) 343 9280
Stephanie Sirota, Chief Business Officer
Alexandra Taracanova, PhD, Director of Investor Relations

Julia Enright, Senior Business Development Associate

Buchanan                                                         +44 (0)20 7466 5107
Charles Ryland

Henry Wilson

George Beale

About RTW Venture Fund Limited:

RTW Venture Fund Limited (LSE: RTW) is an investment fund focused on identifying transformative assets with high growth potential across the biopharmaceutical and medical technology sectors. Driven by a long-term approach to support innovative businesses, RTW Venture Fund invests in companies developing next-generation therapies and technologies that can significantly improve patients' lives.

RTW Venture Fund Limited is managed by RTW Investments, LP, a leading healthcare-focused entrepreneurial investment firm with deep scientific expertise and a strong track record of supporting companies developing life-changing therapies.

Visit the RTW website at www.rtwfunds.com for more information.

Monte Rosa Therapeutics Announces $95 Million Series C Financing to Accelerate Next-generation Protein Degradation Platform

BOSTON, March 12, 2021 - Monte Rosa Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing precision medicines that degrade disease-causing proteins, announced today the closing of a $95 million Series C financing. The proceeds will be used to advance its lead development candidate into the clinic, accelerate pipeline growth and bolster its platform capabilities to rationally design and develop small molecule degraders (also known as molecular glues) that hijack the body's innate ability to degrade proteins. Through this approach, Monte Rosa aims to eradicate undruggable proteins that cause or drive the progression of genomically-defined diseases intractable to standard care, including cancer.

The financing was led by Avoro Capital Advisors with participation from additional new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRock, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and RTW Investments, LP. Monte Rosa's existing investors that also participated in the round include Versant Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Aisling Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, GV, Amzak Health, Sixty Degree Capital, Casdin Capital and Cambridge Asset Management.

"By leveraging the power of nature's protein degradation pathways, our next-generation approach is purpose-built to target the undruggable proteome and eliminate disease-driving proteins with high precision," said Markus Warmuth, M.D., CEO of Monte Rosa. "With extensive and compelling in vivo data in hand, we are confident in the potential of our molecular glue-based targeted protein degradation platform to deliver breakthrough small molecule therapeutics. As we prepare to initiate IND-enabling studies on our lead candidate later this year, and with additional programs transitioning into lead optimization, we are thrilled to have the continued support of such a strong group of new and existing investors who share in our vision. We are excited to build on our early successes to further expand our platform, targeting disease-causing proteins that have been impossible to drug across multiple therapeutic indications."

"Molecular glue degraders represent a powerful and differentiated approach to eradicating disease-causing proteins," said Behzad Aghazadeh, Ph.D., Managing Partner and Portfolio Manager, Avoro Capital Advisors. "Coupled with Monte Rosa's world-class team and drug discovery platform enabled by their machine learning-based prediction of degrons, the company is poised to rapidly expand the previously undruggable target space and foster a new generation of therapeutics."

About Monte Rosa

Monte Rosa Therapeutics is a biotechnology company discovering and developing molecular glues to degrade disease-causing proteins. The company has created a platform to rationally design small molecules that reprogram ubiquitin ligases to eliminate disease drivers previously deemed undruggable. The company's drug discovery platform combines diverse and proprietary chemical libraries of small molecule protein degraders with in-house proteomics, structural biology, machine learning-based target selection and computational chemistry capabilities to predict and obtain protein degradation profiles. Monte Rosa was launched from founding investor Versant Ventures' Ridgeline Discovery Engine and is headquartered in Boston, Mass., with research operations in both Boston and Basel, Switzerland. For more information, visit www.monterosatx.com.

Contacts

Dan Budwick

1AB Media

[email protected]