US-based synthetic cancer drug developer Cyteir Therapeutics increased a series B round led by pharmaceutical firm Novo to $75.2m yesterday.
The company added $40.2m to close the round, which included pharmaceutical company Celgene, Osage University Partners (OUP), Droia Oncology Ventures, Lightstone Ventures and Venrock. The latter three had provided the round’s $29m first tranche in March 2018.
Founded in 2012, Cyteir is looking to commercialise small molecule oncological drugs targeting enzymes known as cytidine deaminases, which damage the body’s DNA and become hyperactive within cancerous tissues.
The approach seeks to inhibit RAD51, a gene that is over-expressed in some cancers. The extra funding will be used to expand research on the company’s lead drug candidate, CYT-0851, which has entered a phase 1/2 trial targeting a range of B-cell and solid tumour-borne malignancies.
Markus Renschler, president and chief executive of Cyteir, said: “The continued support for Cyteir from highly knowledgeable investors reflects the growing excitement around our novel application of synthetic lethality.
“This financing will support the recently launched first-in-human phase 1/2 study of CYT-0851 while simultaneously allowing us to continue investigating our synthetic lethality platform to find new targets that inhibit DNA damage repair. We believe this approach could lead to valuable new treatment options for cancer patients.”
Karen Hong, partner at Novo’s corporate venturing arm, Novo Ventures, will join the company’s board of directors in conjunction with the round.
Celgene joined a group of unnamed private investors to help close Cyteir’s $5.5m series A round in 2015, a round that closed at $5.8m the the following year according to a regulatory filing.
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.