Switzerland-based cancer drug developer FoRx Therapeutics completed a $10m seed round yesterday that was co-led by M Ventures and Novartis Venture Fund, subsidiaries of pharmaceutical firms Merck Group and Novartis.
Investment firm Omega Funds co-led the round with the corporates. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer participated through its Pfizer Ventures unit and the round was filled out by venture capital firm Life Sciences Partners.
Founded in autumn 2019 and utilising University of Geneva research, FoRx is developing cancer therapies intended to spare damage to healthy tissue, using DNA repair pathways to combat a mechanism called DNA replication stress which only occurs in cancerous cells.
FoRx extends research by Thanos Halazonetis, a professor at University of Geneva’s Department of Molecular Biology, and Sotirios Sotiriou, former research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Therese Liechtenstein, principal at M Ventures’ Healthcare Fund, has joined the startup’s board of directors, as has Florian Muellershausen, managing director at Novartis Venture Fund, and Pfizer Ventures managing partner Denis Patrick.
Thanos Halazonetis also has a board seat, as does Omega Funds partner Vincent Ossipow and Vincent Brichard, a venture partner at LSP.