The money continues to flow for drug development startups that are working on inflammatory and immunology medicines licensed from other companies.
A new San Diego biotech called cAMPfield Therapeutics is the latest to secure backing from some of the most well-known and deep-pocketed investors in the life sciences.
The company secured a $180 million Series A, according to a LinkedIn
post
from CEO Bill Gerhart last week. Gerhart appears to have edited the post after being contacted by
Endpoints News
and removed mention of the funding, which hadn’t yet been publicly announced. Its investors include Mountainfield Venture Partners, Frazier Life Sciences, Deep Track Capital, Forbion, Abingworth, Venrock, Longitude Capital, Novo Holdings and RA Capital.
Mountainfield originally formed cAMPfield as Mountainfield II, according to a corporate filing in California. Gerhart is a senior advisor at that investment firm, which last year set up Timberlyne Therapeutics to advance autoimmune medicines from China biotech
Keymed Biosciences
. Timberlyne also
launched with $180 million
in January 2025. Mountainfield has said its strategy is to create companies around “development-stage drug candidates” that are in-licensed “with the potential to transform patient care.”
Gerhart, the cAMPfield CEO, has more than two decades of experience in the pulmonary, fibrotic and inflammatory disease fields and has a history of leading companies to M&A deals.
He was CEO of Elevation Pharmaceuticals when it sold to Sunovion for up to $430 million in 2012, then CEO of Patara Pharma when it sold to Roivant Sciences for up to $348 million.
While at Roivant, he was an entrepreneur in residence and led various “vants,” including Respivant and Kinevant. Respivant’s Phase 2b in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis was terminated early “due to Covid-19,” according to Gerhart’s LinkedIn, while Kinevant’s Phase 2 sarcoidosis drug was terminated due to “inadequate treatment benefit.” He’s also board member of another vant, called Pulmovant, which is in Phase 2 for pulmonary hypertension associated with interstitial lung disease.
Gerhart couldn’t immediately be reached by Endpoints. Other executives at cAMPfield include Chief Technical Officer Patricia Turney, who was previously CTO at Acelyrin, and VP of Global Regulatory Affairs Rita Shah, who has worked in regulation at Vertex, MBX Biosciences, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
It wasn’t immediately clear what cAMPfield’s pipeline entails, but an SEC filing from March indicates it could be involved in a PDE4 inhibitor, called HPP737, from vTv Therapeutics.
In its annual report in March, vTv wrote that cAMPfield is a party to a letter agreement from January between vTv and Shanghai’s Newsoara Biopharma. In February, Newsoara picked up the
global rights
to vTv’s
HPP737
, expanding beyond the regional rights it already held.
HPP737 has been in clinical testing in psoriasis, COPD, atopic dermatitis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in China. That includes an ongoing Phase 3 in psoriasis in China. Approved PDE4 inhibitors include Arcutis Biotherapeutics’ plaque psoriasis and atopic dermatitis topical cream called
Zoryve
; Boehringer Ingelheim also won regulatory approval for
Jascayd
in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis last year. Other
companies
are looking at inhibiting both PDE4 and PDE3 for
COPD
.