October 27, 2014
By Krystle Vermes, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Massachusetts-based Syros Pharmaceuticals announced today that it has ended a Series B round of funding, totaling around $53 million. The therapeutics company, which is based on discovering and developing novel gene control therapies, will use the money to advance its portfolio of cancer programs.
New investors including Polaris Partners, Aisling Capital and Redmile Group led the Series B round of financing. Existing investors including Flagship Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners and Alexandria Venture Investments participated in this round as well.
“This financing is a strong endorsement of the value that Syros is creating and the progress we have made in the 18 months since our launch,” said Nancy Simonian, chief executive officer of Syros. “We are gratified to be able to expand our investor base and to strengthen our balance sheet as we embark on the next stage of the company’s development. We are well positioned to broadly leverage the transformative potential of our gene control platform in oncology and other therapeutic areas, to advance our first program into the clinic in a molecularly defined patient population, and to build a deep pipeline of novel product candidates to benefit patients.”
Syros, launched in 2013, maps gene control pathways in human tissue to identify gene switches.
Series A Financing
In April 2013, Syros announced its $30 million Series A round of financing, which was led by ARCH Venture Partners and Flagship Ventures. At the time, the company said that it would be using the money to accelerate the development and discovery of gene control medicines.
“It is increasingly clear that much of human diseases lies in the switches that control genes rather than the genes themselves,” said Richard Young, Syros co-founder. “We now can map the regulatory circuits in all human cells, including the critical switches in cancer and other diseases. This offers a promising new way to treat disease.”
At the time of that funding round, Nancy Simonian was named the company’s chief executive officer.
“Discovery of the switches for genes critical in disease opens a completely new approach to helping people with serious illnesses such as cancer,” said Simonian.
