US-based drug developer Rome Therapeutics officially launched yesterday with $50m in series A funding from investors including vehicles for internet technology group Alphabet and care provider Partners Healthcare.
Alphabet’s GV unit and Partners Healthcare’s Partners Innovation Fund joined venture capital firm Arch Venture Partners in the round.
Rome is developing treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases focused on the repeatome: the term for the 60% of the human genome that responds to repetitive sequences of nucleic acids.
Rosana Kapeller, Rome’s co-founder, president and CEO, incubated it within GV where she was an entrepreneur in residence. It has several drug development initiatives in place having identified multiple targets it regards as promising.
The company’s founding technology stems from research by Benjamin Greenbaum at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, and by David Ting at Massachusetts General Hospital. Ting is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
GV general partner Krishna Yeshwant and Julius Knowles, partner at Partners Innovation Fund, have both taken seats on Rome’s board of directors, as has Kristina Burow, one of Arch Venture Partners’ managing directors.
Yeshwant said: “Rosana has brought together some of the best minds in oncology, immunology, virology and machine learning to create a novel approach to harnessing the power of the repeatome.
“We believe that Rome has the insights and expertise to turn cutting-edge discoveries in this field into an important new class of medicines, and we are proud to continue working with Rosana and her team as they drive their programs forward.”
