Xencor, which develops protein and antibody therapeutics, said Thursday that it raised $45 million in a private financing led by two large drug companies that see potential for their own pipelines in the Monrovia company’s innovative drug discovery technology.

MedImmune Ventures Inc., the venture arm of Gaithersburg, Mary-based MedImmune Inc. and Denmark-based Novo Nordisk AS were joined by Cambridge, Mary-based venture capital firm HealthCare Ventures, in the funding, which more than a third of the $130 million the early-stage drug company has raised to date. Longtime company supporter Zen Investments also participated in financing.

The financing will help fund early stage clinical trials of two biologic drug compounds. One is a first-in-class protein therapeutic for inflammatory diseases and the other a novel antibody drug candidate to treat Hodgkin’s disease. Both were developed using the company’s proprietary technologies.

Antibodies are large Y-shaped proteins used by the immune system to neutralize foreign objects such as bacteria and viruses. Most drug developers focus on the tips of the two arms of the Y, said Chief Executive Bassil Dahiyat, but Xencor focuses its attention on the stem itself, looking for ways to strengthen an antibody’s potency against its target.

Gus Lawlor, HealthCare Ventures’ managing director, said his firm was impressed with the team that Dahiyat has assembled over the years, its intellectual property portfolio, and by the road-less-taken approach the company had toward antibody-based drug development, one of the hottest areas of drug research.

“They have everything you look for in an investment at this stage great people, great technology and promising products coming down the pipeline,” said Lawlor, noting that South San Francisco-based biotech giant Genentech Inc. licenses the drug development platform for its own research. “Xencor has some really extraordinary insight into engineering antibodies and proteins more broadly.”