Significant contributions were made to the Series A by Boxer Capital, Nextech Invest, Casdin Capital, Invus Financial Advisors, and Eventide Asset Management.
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Third Rock Ventures has closed a Series A financing round that raised $82 million, funding which will be used to launch Flare Therapeutics, a new biotech startup focused on developing precision treatments for cancer and other diseases. Significant contributions were made to the Series A by Boxer Capital, Nextech Invest, Casdin Capital, Invus Financial Advisors, and Eventide Asset Management.
Flare uses a “switch-site based drug discovery approach,” which helped the company develop a pipeline of therapeutic programs that target pivotal cancer drivers such as transcription factor dysregulation and mutations. The new financing from the Series A will support its ability to advance its lead precision oncology program toward the clinic.
Flare currently has three lead precision oncology programs. The first program is expected to move into the clinic in 2023 or 2024, while the following two programs are expected to enter the clinic in the two years following.
Abbie Celniker, Ph.D., Flare’s interim Chief Executive Officer, and Third Rock Ventures partner, said in a statement that the new startup company was created “to pursue the mission of conquering transcription factors which have been one of the most sought-after targets of drug developers based on the central role they play in cancer and other diseases.”
Transcription factors appear to play a central role in cancer, among other diseases, according to emerging data and scientific discoveries published over the past ten years. “Yet, transcription factors have continued to be elusive for finding targetable sites for drug discovery, with less than 1% of transcription factors successfully targeted for medicines,” according to a statement made by Flare’s Scientific Co-Founder, Fraydoon Rastinejad, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry and structural biology at the University of Oxford.
The novel drug discovery paradigm established by Flare uses an approach that targets transcription factors. According to the company, this strategy is based primarily “on a broader understanding of the cooperative communication and allosteric interaction among the elements of the transcriptional molecular complex,” in contrast to the previous scientific focus on only single, isolated transcription factor domains.
Recent work by the company’s Scientific Co-Founders has helped Flare gain a greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in targeting transcription factors. This understanding, according to Flare, has helped its research team to “recognize the broad potential to generalize these principles to the ‘switch site’ as a focal point for drugging transcription factors in a new way.”
Scientific Co-Founder of Flare, Steven McKnight, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Texas, Southwestern, noted, “Maturation of the fields of human genetics and the biochemistry of gene regulation now point us towards opportunities for therapeutic intervention using conventional, small molecule drugs.”
Likely, Flare will also plan to use the new Series A funding to grow its staff to 25 employees. Currently, the company employs 12 to 15 full-time staffers, mainly relying on contractors and partners to fulfill its operational needs.
