Pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has led a $65m series B round for US-based small molecule drug developer HotSpot Therapeutics through its corporate venture capital unit, SR One.
The round included MRL Ventures Fund, a corporate VC vehicle for pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co, and Cleva Pharma, an affiliate of pharmaceutical company EMS’s Brace Pharma subsidiary.
Atlas Venture and Sofinnova Partners filled out the round alongside Aju IB Investment’s Solasta Ventures subsidiary and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management. It came after HotSpot closed a $45m series A round in July 2018 that included Atlas Venture and Sofinnova Partners.
HotSpot is developing treatments for cancer, autoimmune and rare diseases using SpotFinder, a drug development platform it has created that locates regulatory hotspots on proteins that control protein function and which could be amenable for the development of medicines.
SR One partner Jill Carroll has joined the board of directors at HotSpot together with Henry Skinner, a senior vice-president, Venture at Tekla Capital Management.
Carroll said: “Leveraging its proprietary SpotFinder technology platform, HotSpot is succeeding in critically important areas of biology that were otherwise considered intractable and undruggable.
“We are very excited to partner with this seasoned team to transform HotSpot into a clinical stage company and to bring first-in-class allosteric drugs targeting natural regulatory mechanisms to patients.”
