Healthcare Industry News: Pegasus
News Release - November 13, 2018
Kymera Therapeutics Announces $65 Million Series B Financing to Advance Pipeline of Targeted Protein Degraders in Oncology and Immunology
Series B financing led by 6 Dimensions Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Pfizer VenturesFinancing to enable the advancement of lead program into clinical development and support the progression of additional programs
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 13, 2018 -- (Healthcare Sales & Marketing Network) -- Kymera Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company pioneering targeted protein degradation to create breakthrough medicines for patients, announced today that it has completed a $65 million Series B financing. The financing will support the advancement of its lead asset into clinical development, and to progress its therapeutic pipeline in oncology and immunology. The financing was co-led by 6 Dimensions Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Pfizer Ventures with participation by MRL Ventures Fund, Sanofi Ventures, Hatteras Venture Partners, and Aju IB Investment, in addition to Kymera's Series A investors. The company also announced Wei Li, PhD, of 6 Dimensions Capital, Andrew Hedin of Bessemer Venture Partners, and Elaine Jones, PhD, of Pfizer Ventures, will join Kymera Therapeutics' Board of Directors.
"We are delighted to have the support of this exceptional group of both new and existing investors and experts that share our vision and excitement on our progress to date," said Laurent Audoly, PhD, president and CEO, Kymera Therapeutics. "In the last year, we've made great strides in building preclinical data packages supporting both the drug-like properties of our assets and their differentiated pharmacology. This rapid advancement has been enabled by our focused investment in Kymera's industry-leading protein degradation platform and a stellar team of drug hunters and seasoned executives."
Since announcing its founding in 2016, Kymera Therapeutics has progressed its proprietary Pegasus™ integrated degradation platform, consisting of informatics-driven target identification coupled to ternary complex predictive modeling, new degradation tools, and novel E3 ligases and ligands. Kymera also entered into a two-year discovery collaboration agreement with GSK, leveraging innovations in small molecule-based targeted protein degradation and encoded library technologies.
"This year has been marked by the maturation of our pipeline with applications across diverse target types and disease indications as well as a deeper understanding of the pharmaceutical properties required to develop protein degrading drugs," said Nello Mainolfi, PhD, co-founder and chief technology officer, Kymera Therapeutics. "These insights have allowed us to refine our drug discovery platform and improve our ability to identify first-in-class drug candidates."
"Kymera is truly at the forefront of targeted protein degradation, one of the most exciting new areas of drug discovery and medicine," said Bruce Booth, DPhil, Kymera co-founder, partner at Atlas Venture, and chairman of the board. "With an incredible team, advisors and syndicate and a singular focus on rational drug discovery, the company has quickly emerged as a leader in the field and is well-positioned to realize the potential of this transformational modality to impact patients."
About Kymera Therapeutics
Kymera Therapeutics is a biotechnology company pioneering a transformative new approach to treating previously untreatable diseases. The company is advancing the field of targeted protein degradation, accessing the body's innate protein recycling machinery to degrade dysregulated, disease-causing proteins. Powered by Pegasus™, a game-changing integrated degradation platform, Kymera is accelerating drug discovery with an unmatched ability to target and degrade the most intractable of proteins, and advance new treatment options for patients. For more information visit, www.kymeratx.com.
About Pegasus™
Pegasus™ is Kymera Therapeutics' proprietary protein degradation platform, created by its team of experienced drug hunters to improve the effectiveness of targeted protein degradation and generate a pipeline of novel therapeutics for previously undruggable diseases. The platform consists of informatics driven target identification, novel E3 ligases, proprietary ternary complex predictive modeling capabilities and degradation tools.
About 6 Dimensions Capital
6 Dimensions Capital is a leading healthcare focused investment firm with an in-depth focus and extensive coverage across China and the United States. It consists of a team of about 40 investment and operation professionals with offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Boston, and Palo Alto. The firm currently has US$1.6 billion assets under management through 4 US dollar-denominated and 3 RMB-denominated funds and has cultivated a portfolio of more than 80 companies. For more information, visit www.6dimensionscapital.com.
About Pfizer Ventures
Pfizer Ventures (PV), the venture capital arm of Pfizer Inc. was founded in 2004 and invests for return in areas of current or future strategic interest to Pfizer. PV seeks to remain at the forefront of life science advances, looking to identify and invest in emerging companies that are developing transformative medicines and technologies that have the potential to enhance Pfizer's pipeline and shape the future of our industry. For more information, visit www.pfizerventures.com.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is the world's most experienced early-stage venture capital firm, with a portfolio of more than 200 companies, including Pinterest, Betterment, Smule, Rocket Lab, Procore, PagerDuty, Intercom, Fiverr, ServiceTitan, Toast, Allscripts, and Bright Health. Bessemer partners early with visionary entrepreneurs and supports them throughout every stage of their growth, primarily focusing on consumer, enterprise, healthcare, and frontier technology companies. The firm has backed more than 120 IPOs, including Shopify, Yelp, LinkedIn, Skype, OvaScience, LifeLock, Twilio, SendGrid, DocuSign, Wix, and MindBody. Bessemer's 14 partners operate from offices in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Israel, and India. For more information, visit www.bvp.com.
Source: Kymera Therapeutics
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