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Versant Ventures-founded precision oncology company focused on cryptic driver mutations
Goldman Sachs Asset Management leads $90 million Series A
Lead program on track for development candidate nomination by Q1 2023
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Nested Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a next-generation precision medicine platform to address hard-to-treat cancers, today announced the completion of a $90 million Series A financing led by the Life Sciences Investing business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, bringing the total financing to $125 million since Versant Ventures founded the company. New investors participating in the Series A include Foresite Capital, Avidity Partners, Cowen Healthcare Investments, and Section 32.
The financing will enable Nested to advance its pipeline programs, attract additional top-tier talent, and further develop its platform that reveals cryptic, or newly uncovered, driver mutations and pockets in high-conviction cancer targets to dramatically expand the reach of precision medicine.
"Our drug discovery platform enables us to find new, overlooked areas of opportunity in the form of high confidence targets with unconventional pockets, while also generating the insights necessary to design therapeutics with novel mechanisms for a perfect fit," said Darrin Miles, Chief Executive Officer of Nested Therapeutics. "Patients deserve more and better options, and our approach holds the promise to make first- and best-in-class precision oncology treatments available to a larger addressable population."
A Differentiated Oncology PlatformNested's platform involves a three-pillar approach that: (1) maps mutational clusters onto the structural proteome, (2) identifies druggable pockets and cancer-driving mechanisms, and (3) designs novel drugs optimized for the druggable pocket. The company's lead compound, NEST-1, is a non-degrading dual molecular glue that targets multiple components of the MAPK pathway and has demonstrated potentially superior efficacy, tolerability and CNS activity relative to both single agents and combinations in RAS/MAPK-driven models.
"Working closely with our scientific co-founders and advisory board, we recognized the limitations with current precision medicines and felt there was an opportunity to combine insights and expertise from our various fields to build more effective therapies," said Klaus Hoeflich, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Nested. "Our platform uses insights from an array of fields, including genomics, structural biology, computational biophysics, and artificial intelligence. This opens doors to design novel small molecules for previously known targets with well-understood biology and to target what has been previously undruggable."
"Nested Therapeutics is poised to dramatically increase the number of targets that can be reached through precision medicine, giving more patients an opportunity to be treated with better, more targeted therapies," said Josh Richardson, M.D., Managing Director at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. "We look forward to working with this impressive team of industry experts to support the development of their platform and pipeline of medicines."
Nested Leadership TeamNested is led by a highly experienced team of pioneers in the precision medicine space who have collectively brought 35 molecules to the clinic and overseen 10 precision oncology medicines now on the market, including:
The team is bolstered by a scientific advisory board with deep expertise in precision medicine, computational chemistry, biophysics, and proteomics, including:
"The team at Nested is an incredibly dedicated group working to advance precision medicine towards a variety of challenging yet unequivocal targets in cancer," said Arvin Dar, Ph.D., scientific co-founder and observing member of the Board of Directors at Nested Therapeutics. "My fellow co-founder, Kevan, and I are honored that this talented group of drug hunters are building from science in our respective labs and are optimistic about what they have accomplished in a relatively short amount of time."
"We have seen tremendous progress in precision medicine over the past several decades, but there continue to be barriers to drugging the wide array of genetically validated oncology targets," said Carlo Rizzuto, Ph.D., Managing Director at Versant Ventures and a Nested board member. "With Nested, our newest portfolio company in the space, we believe there now is potential to unlock significant therapeutic real estate."
About Nested TherapeuticsNested Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing novel, targeted, small molecule precision medicine therapies for patients with cancer by using mutation clusters to identify druggable pockets. With a platform that utilizes insights from genomics, computational chemistry, proteomics, and AI, Nested is working to reach untapped mutations with the potential to improve outcomes for millions of patients. To learn more, visit www.nestedtx.com and follow Nested Therapeutics on Twitter (@Nestedtx) and LinkedIn.
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SOURCE Nested Therapeutics, Inc.