December 14, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Goldfinch Bio, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., launched today with a $55 million Series A financing. The financing was run by Third Rock Ventures.
Goldfinch Bio will focus on developing therapies for kidney disease. The company’s co-founder is Peter Mundel, formerly faculty at Harvard Medical School. He will act as the senior vice president of Biology. Jean-Christophe Harmange will be senior vice president of Drug Discovery. Phil Reilly will serve as Goldfinch Bio’s interim chief medical officer. Third Rock Partner Neil Exter will act as interim chief operating officer. Abbie Celniker, a partner at Third Rock Ventures, will be interim chief executive officer. Celniker was named a partner of Third Rock Ventures in October, and is a former chief executive officer of Eleven Biotherapeutics , a Third Rock-backed company.
The company’s scientific founders include Mundel, Joseph Bonventre, with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Friedhelm Hildebrandt, with Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Daniel MacArthur, with Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Stefan Somlo of Yale School of Medicine. Anna Greka, of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will act as a scientific advisor.
“Current treatment options for patients with progressive kidney disease are often off-label, non-specific, and carry significant toxicities,” Celniker said in a statement. “By building on recent breakthroughs from our founders to better understand the molecular processes of kidney disease, we see a unique opportunity to spur a renaissance in the discovery and development of new therapies to treat the underlying causes of disease. To accomplish this, Goldfinch has brought together the leading scientists, clinicians, and drug hunters behind a common goal to create the first precision therapies for patients with kidney disease.”
To that end, Goldfinch says it “has developed a product engine that integrates genetic, genomic and biological tools to identify and validate novel drug targets and inform treatment strategies focused on molecularly defined patient groups.” This will require healthcare institutions worldwide to submit data, and the company will then analyze the data to identify genetic mutations that are associated with the disease patterns observed in the database.
Mundel told Xconomy, “Our idea is to take the oncology approach and bring it to the kidney space.”
It is also working outside the bioanalytics area as well, developing what Mundel calls an “organoid,” or a kidney in a dish. The funding is also planned to be used to move one or two drug candidates into the clinic, possibly by late 2018 or early 2019.
The two diseases the company plans to focus on initially are focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and polycystic kidney disease (PKD). FSGS involves damage to the glomeruli, which are organelles within the kidney that filter blood. PKD is an inherited disease marked by the formation of cysts in the kidney. Both have known genetic aspects and no current FDA-approved therapies.
“This is a transformational moment in nephrology, when it is finally possible to create therapies that alter the fundamental disease biology and prevent its progression,” Mundel said in a statement. “I am thrilled to join Goldfinch to help make this vision a reality, and to make a lasting difference for patients in need.”
The company will start with approximately 10 employees, but expects to hire another 12 or so in the upcoming year. It is currently located at the Athenaeum Press building in Cambridge at 215 First Street.
