SHANGHAI – Getting to a $21 million series C has not been a sure thing for Eureka Therapeutics Inc., a cancer immunotherapy company based in Emeryville, Calif. The firm's last round of funding was six years ago, right before the financial crisis hit. But today, with cutting-edge technology that can access intracellular targets, the company finds it has become attractive to investors again.

"The company was set up to focus on drug discovery for oncology," Cheng Liu, founder and CEO of Eureka, told BioWorld Today. "Our mission is to find a cure for cancer. Our passion is cancer drug discovery.

"The technology is fully human antibody discovery," he added. "We investigate finding antibody drugs for cancer treatment. We got lucky, and now we are one of the leaders in the world, with our fully human antibody against an intracellular oncogene."

During the lean years, Eureka was able to collect some $18 million in nondilutive funding, from revenue-generating licensing, services and collaborations. According to Liu, that is how the company was able to survive during the financial crisis, and now "have the technology and pipeline to be attractive enough to attract a much bigger round of funding – $21 million."

That latest round was lead by Yuan Capital, a private equity firm with offices in Hong Kong and Beijing. Yuan's focus is on investment opportunities in China in a variety of sectors, including finance and technology, as well as health care.

But in an interesting twist, Yuan Capital headed west, to the U.S. and approached Eureka with the opportunity. The Chinese venture firm is the lead investor, with Majuven, and existing investors Acorn Campus Ventures, Suma Venture and Harbinger Venture Capital, also participating.

Liu said he sees this as a sign of things to come: Chinese money unafraid to jump into early stage American biomedical companies like Eureka, still a preclinical company.

"I think it is a new trend," Liu said, "Chinese VCs are getting more serious about biomedical research. I think they finally realize that the technology and the innovation is in the U.S.; they can't be so narrow-minded about China alone."

Liu, born in China, received his undergraduate degree in genetics and cell biology at the prestigious Peking University before completing a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. It was at Berkeley that Liu discovered an interest in the Greek classics and the name for his company came about – Eureka, a word immortalized by Archimedes to convey the wonder of scientific discovery.

With that affinity for the west, it is not surprising when the time came for Liu to set up his own shop, he decided the best place was to stay in the U.S., unlike so many of his peers, the returnee "sea turtles" who are arriving in China in droves.

"The U.S. is still the leader in innovation, including biomedical research. There are many advantages to do biomedical research here: information flow, the openness, the big pool of talent, including talented scientists with Chinese heritage," Liu said.

Although Eureka also has a lab in Beijing, the lure of Chinese government funding and support could not outweigh the advantages of conducting cutting-edge research in the U.S.

That strategy seems to have paid off. In January, Eureka cut a deal with Novartis AG for lead candidate EKS1. Although terms were not disclosed, Liu said the deal was worth a few hundred million dollars in total, with a decent up-front fee.

The candidate, co-discovered in collaboration with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, is a monoclonal antibody (MAb) that targets WT1 proteins inside cancer cells, with potential to treat leukemia and other cancers.

In April, the company published proof-of-concept data to show that an Fc-enhanced MAb can improve efficacy against a low-density, tumor-specific peptide/MHC target, supporting further development of the MAb against an intracellular oncoprotein.

The company has several other preclinical candidates in development and, according to Liu, the latest funding will be used to "advance our drug pipeline, as well as explore the synergistic effects of our drug candidates with other immunotherapies and immune modulators."

The company expects to be entering the clinic with an undisclosed immunotherapy candidate in the coming year.