KSQ Therapeutics disclosed that they’ve obtained an $80 million Series C financing that will be put towards the development of oncology drug candidates via CRISPRomics™, a drug discovery engine that creates insights specific to individual human genes on an industrial scale. The company describes the engine as “our industrialized discovery engine that utilizes a suite of proprietary CRISPR/Cas9 tools to generate disease-specific insights for every human gene with improved precision and at unprecedented scale. We have evolved this engine into multiple distinct platforms to identify and genetically validate optimal novel targets for drug discovery. CRISPRomics has broad utility across multiple therapeutic areas, and the company is currently deploying this approach in the areas of oncology, immuno-oncology, autoimmune disease, and select rare diseases.” With the new funding influx, KSQ Therapeutics will advance its original drug program, focused on adoptive T-cell immunotherapy, and up to three new studied oncology drug programs.
KSQ Therapeutics has utilized CRISPRomics for the duration of the past twelve months, beginning and furthering 12 separate drug discovery programs over three oncology-based pharmaceutical categories. Adoptive T-cell therapies, immuno-oncology, and targeted therapies are currently being explored, and the company plans to eventually use CRISPRomics in immunology, rare diseases, and other therapeutic areas. Founding and existing investors are still participating in the Series C funding, including Flagship Pioneering, Polaris Partners, ARCH Venture Partners, and Alexandria Equities. New investors include Baillie Gifford, Cowen Healthcare Investments, Invus, and Lilly Asia Ventures.
David Meeker, MD, Chief Executive Officer of KSQ, remarks that “KSQ has made remarkable progress in the past 12 months taking an unbiased, whole-genome approach to target identification with the goal of changing the probabilities of drug discovery and development. This approach has rapidly generated a broad pipeline of cancer programs and positions us to create new medicines with higher success rates and better outcomes for patients. The power of our platform is evident in our first drug program, a modified adoptive T-cell immunotherapy with strong activity in PD-1 resistant solid tumors.”
KSQ Therapeutics was founded in 2015 by Tim Wang with an intent to apply groundbreaking functional genomics technology to discover new pathways in oncology and immuno-oncology. With the success of their CRISPR-enabled dataset, they’ve expanded to areas beyond oncology. Their pipeline is focused on tumor and immune-specific drug candidates, with two primary areas of development: a tumor-genome platform, and a T-cell genome platform. The former focuses on targeted cancer therapies while the latter involves immuno-oncology monotherapies.
“KSQ has made impressive progress in demonstrating the power of its pioneering CRISPRomics discovery engine. We see a compelling opportunity for KSQ’s high-confidence drug development approach to identify untapped opportunities and improve productivity in developing innovative medicines,” adds Jim Gilbert, Senior Partner at Flagship Pioneering and Chairman of the Board at KSQ.
The individuality and cutting-edge aspects of CRISPRomics come with the speed and scale. While other similarly functioning engines are working with ones, hundreds, or thousands, CRISPR is examining the function of all 20,000 human genome genes concurrently. This scale has allowed rapid and deep validation that accurately generates the Adoptive Cell Therapies (TILs), Immuno-Oncology (mAbs, small molecules), and Targeted Oncology (mAbs, small molecules) in the Product Development Pipeline.
“Our CRISPRomics engine has exceeded expectations in its performance and productivity, as it has systematically pinpointed cancer targets across two platforms – one for targeted therapies and another for immuno-oncology – and shown extraordinary scale, precision and speed in generating our pipeline of more than a dozen drug programs,” additioned Dr. Meeker. “With this financing and strong syndicate of investors, we are well positioned to take the next steps in realizing the potential of CRISPRomics to advance medicines that will have meaningful impact for patients.”
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