Pharmaceutical firms Pfizer and Taiho co-led a $65m series A round for US-based oncology therapy developer Parthenon Therapeutics yesterday through corporate venturing units Pfizer Ventures and Taiho Ventures.
The round was co-led with venture capital firm Northpond Ventures and included Alexandria Venture Investments, the VC arm of life sciences real estate investment trust Alexandria Real Estate Equities.
Section 32, Breakout Ventures, Creacion Ventures, KdT Ventures and Park West Asset Management filled out the round’s participants together with funds managed by Tekla Capital Management.
Parthenon is working on cancer therapies intended to reprogram the microenvironment of a tumour immune exclusion. Its lead product candidate, PRTH-101, is being developed to potentially combat a range of cancers.
Laurent Audoly, Parthenon’s co-founder and CEO, said: “Parthenon was established with the goal of developing first-in-class therapeutics that have the highest potential for improving the survival of the greatest number of people living with cancer.
“We are focused on reprogramming the tumour microenvironment to attack the protective barrier that half of all human cancers build to repel immune attack, a novel approach, we believe, with the potential to create an entirely new class of anti-cancer therapies.”
