CAMBRIDGE, Mass.– FogPharma®, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to delivering a new class of therapies that go beyond the limits of currently available medicines using its Helicon™ peptide platform, today announced the successful closing of a $145 million Series E financing round. The financing was led by Nextech Invest with participation from other new investors including RA Capital Management, Rock Springs Capital, General Catalyst, Marshall Wace, Samsara Biocapital, Foresite Capital, Symbiosis, Catalio Capital Management, Sixty Degree Capital and former chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, Alex Gorsky.
There was strong support by existing investors, including ARCH Venture Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, GV, Cormorant Asset Management, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Farallon Capital Management, venBio Partners, Invus and Milky Way Investments. Alexis Borisy, an accomplished investor and entrepreneur, also joined the company’s board of directors in the position designated to Nextech.
The financing will fund the ongoing clinical development of FOG-001, the company’s first-in-class intracellular TCF-blocking β-catenin inhibitor currently being evaluated in a Phase 1/2 study in solid tumors. The round will also accelerate the development of its robust portfolio of unique discovery programs, deepen its data science capabilities and strengthen its core Helicon therapeutics platform.
FOG-001 is a Helicon designed to block the key oncogenic step in the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, one of the most frequently activated pathways in a variety of cancers. Mutations in the pathway are particularly prevalent in colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of all global cancer deaths, with an estimated two million new cases per year, according to the World Health Organization. Despite significant biological validation of the β-catenin:TCF interaction as a cancer driver, no existing treatment has been able to disrupt it due to its inaccessibility to antibody and traditional small molecule medicines.
“Millions of colorectal cancer patients have been told by their oncologists that no more can be done for them. We believe FOG-001 may represent the long-awaited major technological breakthrough needed to address one of the most common yet unaddressed oncogenic signaling pathways,” said Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., FogPharma’s chairman, president and chief executive officer. “This financing will allow us to execute on our expanded clinical development and commercialization strategy to deliver FOG-001 to patients, while simultaneously strengthening our discovery efforts against other compelling intracellular targets that drive a range of diseases.”
FOG-001 is the first of several wholly-owned programs generated by FogPharma’s Helicon platform being advanced to address biologically validated disease-driving intracellular targets by modulating protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions inside the cell. FogPharma’s Helicon platform combines ultra-diverse and tunable stabilized helical peptides with custom-built computational physics and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to enable the discovery and development of novel programs across a vast array of intracellular targets that have never before been drugged.
“We are excited by the tremendous potential of FOG-001 to meaningfully change the therapeutic landscape through a novel approach, and are equally impressed by FogPharma’s robust pipeline of programs for significant drivers of cancer,” said Nextech Managing Partner Thilo Schroeder, Ph.D. “The company’s rapid progress across its growing pipeline demonstrates FogPharma’s team is enabled to deliver on the vast potential of its Helicon therapeutics platform.”
The financing follows a period of rapid growth for the company as its leadership team has expanded with industry veterans with track records in clinical, commercial and data science execution. This includes the company’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D.; healthcare data science pioneer and Chief Data Officer Brandon Allgood, Ph.D.; Chief Technical Operations Officer Rohin Mhatre, Ph.D.; and Chief Business Officer Gregory Miller, MPH, MBA.
