Biotechnology company Heat Biologics has raised $5 million as the Chapel Hill firm continues evaluating its cancer-fighting technology in clinical trials.

According to securities filings, the funding is a mix of equity and options, warrants and rights to acquire other securities. A total of 20 investors participated in the offering.

In December, Heat Biologics secured a line of credit from Square 1 Bank as a continuing effort to raise financing to help pay for clinical trials. The amount of the financing was not disclosed.

“Proceeds of the credit facility will be used to support ongoing clinical trials and company growth,” Square 1, which is based in Durham, said in announcing the deal.

In January, the company also secured a $250,000 loan from the N.C. Biotechnology Center. 

Heat had been in the midst of a $4.14 million fundraising effort for more than a year.

As of December 2011, the company had raised $2.8 million in equity financing from three investors were were not identified in an SEC filing.

Heat Bio is in phase II clinical trials studying HS-110 as a treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. A bladder cancer treatment is also being prepared to start clinical trials. The company has developed a proprietary technology it calls Immune Pan-Antigen Cytotoxic Therapy, or ImPACT. The technology reprograms live tumor cells to continually produce antigens that prompt the body’s immune system to fight disease. Heat Bio aims to use ImPACT would to make off-the shelf vaccines that can be used by a general population of patients, unlike some of personalized medicine therapies that are patient specific.

Heat Biologics was spun out of the University of Miami in 2008. The company relocated to North Carolina in 2011.