VC Roundup: Relay Raises $57m To Seek Drug Targets Among Proteins In Motion
Executive Summary
Relay launched with $57m to develop its novel technology platform for drug discovery based on protein motion with an initial focus on therapies for genetically defined cancers.
Relay Therapeutics has launched with $57m in Series A venture capital to identify new drug targets and to find new ways of addressing difficult targets by studying proteins in motion rather than looking at static images.
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pictures,” Relay’s Executive Chairman and Interim CEO Alexis Borisy said in an interview. “Instead of still snapshots that are frozen in a moment, we can have full motion. It allows us to have insights we didn't have about how to understand [drug targets].” Borisy, a partner at Relay’s founding co-investor Third Rock Ventures, said pharma company research and development heads already have shown interest in the startup’s technology platform. Relay will focus on cancer drug discovery, but it may collaborate with others in neuroscience, immuno-inflammation, immuno-oncology and other areas.
Exactly what the company’s platform consists of is a bit murky, however, as Relay is keeping details about its intellectual property close to the vest. Borisy declined to say where the firm licensed its IP from, but Relay’s list of founders – including Series A round investor and computational biology research specialist D.E. Shaw Research LLC – may offer some clues.
Relay’s foundation was laid by structural biology, biophysics and biomolecular simulation experts, like D.E. Shaw Research’s Chief Scientist David E. Shaw. Other founders include University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Professor and Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department Chair Matthew Jacobson; Brandeis University Professor and [Howard Hughes Medical Institute] Investigator Dorothee Kern; and Relay’s Chief Scientific Officer Mark Murcko, who is a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Relay “will build on recent scientific and technological advances in structural biology, biophysics, computation, chemistry and biology to create an integrated drug discovery engine fueled by a detailed understanding of the dynamic structural changes undergone by protein molecules within the body,” the company said in its Series A funding announcement.
The technology platform represents a paradigm shift, Borisy and Relay contend, that will be similar to the adoption of stationary snapshots of molecules into the drug discovery process generations ago – a shift that began in the 1950s and led to more effective medicines by the 1980s.
“Our goal is to build Relay into a transformative company. We will do that by a combination of partnerships and by building our pipeline,” Borisy told Scrip.
He noted that Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s strategy in the late 1980s “was the tip of the spear in structure-based drug design, but now it’s conventional wisdom – the standard of the industry. For Relay, we aspire to having that kind of effect on the industry. A generation from now, we expect that this will be general wisdom.”
First, Relay will have to prove what its drug discovery platform is capable of, starting with novel treatments for genetically defined segments of cancer patients. But the company, which has 25 employees at its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, isn’t disclosing how it will get from scientific concepts to human data. Borisy wouldn’t confirm whether Relay’s Series A financing will fund preclinical studies only or also support initiation of clinical trials.
Other Recent VC Deals
Details for some of the financings in the table below were provided by Strategic Transactions, Informa's premium source for tracking life sciences deal activity [see the companies marked (ST)].
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Company |
Investors |
Use Of Proceeds |
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Proclara Biosciences; Cambridge, Massachusetts |
Prior investors led a $47m Series E round with participation from new investors, including Merieux Developpement. Proclara, formerly known as NeuroPhage Pharmaceuticals, has raised more than $110m to date, including a $17m Series D round in 2014. (Also see " BioNotebook: Offerings slow on market woes, others raise venture cash " - Scrip, 29 Mar, 2014.) |
Proclara recently initiated a Phase Ib clinical trial for lead drug candidate NPT088 in Alzheimer’s disease, but its Series E round also will support preclinical research under its General Amyloid Interaction Motif (GAIM) platform, which allows for the targeting of multiple misfolded proteins in a single therapy to treat multi-factorial diseases. Proclara recently completed a Phase Ia trial in 40 health volunteers. A successful multi-dose Phase Ib study will support Phase II/III studies in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. |
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Inflazome; Dublin, Ireland |
Novartis Venture Funds and Fountain Healthcare Partners led a Series A round that will total up to €15m ($17m). |
Inflazome is developing inhibitors of the inflammasome, which regulates innate immune response in many diseases. Inflazome CEO and Co-Founder Matt Cooper said in a statement that “inflammasome activation is now implicated in many diseases driven by chronic inflammation, from Parkinson’s to asthma,” for which current therapies are inadequate. |
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Advantagene Inc.; Auburndale, Massachusetts |
A private placement of Series A convertible preferred stock generated $14.2m. The company previously raised $2.2m in a late 2015 convertible debt financing. |
Advantagene will use the funding to develop its Gene Mediated Cytotoxic Immunotherapy (GMCI) platform, including initiation of a Phase III clinical trial for lead product candidate ProstAtak in the treatment of newly diagnosed, localized prostate cancer for patients receiving radiation therapy; completion of a Phase IIb trial with localized prostate cancer patients who are undergoing active surveillance; clinical activities in brain, lung and pancreatic cancer; and development of commercial manufacturing capabilities. |
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AnTolRx Inc.; Cambridge, Massachusetts (ST) |
AnTolRx raised $4m in its Series A financing led by Pfizer Inc., which was joined by Orion Equity Partners and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). |
Proceeds will fund the company over the next two years as AnTolRx works on developing antigen-specific targeted nanoparticle tolerance therapeutics (TNTT) to treat immune disorders. The technology comes from the lab of Francisco Quintana at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School. AnTolRx's lead program in Type I diabetes is designed to selectively target pathogenic T cells via the delivery of both a self-antigen and an endogenous tolerogenic molecule, which induces an anti-inflammatory phenotype. Pfizer has an exclusive option to in-license the preclinical compound upon achievement of certain milestones. |
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Avitide Inc.; Lebanon, New Hampshire |
Mithril Capital Management LLC led a Series D round, but the amount of money that Avitide raised was not disclosed. Avitide’s Series C round totaled $7.6m. (Also see "Avitide Raises Funds For “On-Demand” Affinity Processing" - Scrip, 15 Sep, 2015.) |
The company develops novel affinity purification solutions used by the biopharmaceutical industry to manufacture therapeutics, including enzymes, novel scaffolds, multi-specific antibodies and vaccines. Avitide claims that its simplified protein purification process helps speed up biopharma companies’ bioprocess development timelines, reduce program risk, improve drug performance, achieve greater predictability and lower manufacturing costs. Avitide chairman and co-founder Tillman Gerngross is CEO and co-founder of the private, profitable antibody discovery firm and frequent big pharma partner Adimab LLC. (Also see "Private Adimab Breaks $1 Billion Valuation, Offers VCs Liquidity Through $100 Million Secondary" - Scrip, 6 Feb, 2015.) |
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Kleo Pharmaceuticals Inc.; New Haven, Connecticut (ST) |
Kleo raised an undisclosed amount in its Series A round from Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Co. Ltd.; Kleo and Biohaven also entered into a clinical development master services agreement. Like Kleo, Biohaven has licensed assets from Yale University. Yale also is one of Biohaven’s investors. |
Kleo was formed last year by Yale’s David Spiegel around intellectual property licensed from Yale concurrent with the Series A. The company is developing antibody recruiting molecules (ARMs) and synthetic antibody mimics (SyAMs) in an effort to activate a patient's immune system to fight off cancer and infectious diseases. Kleo says that its small molecule ARMs and SyAMs mimic the functionality of large molecules, but are lighter and easier to produce than biologics. Series A proceeds will fund pipeline development. |