CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AILERON Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company applying its proprietary Stapled Peptide technology to the development of breakthrough biologics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, announced today that it has raised $10 million through a private placement of Preferred Stock. Apple Tree Partners and the Novartis Venture Fund co-led the round.
AILERON plans to use the proceeds from this financing to expand its drug discovery team and to open a 10,000+ square foot “Stapled Peptide” research facility located at 840 Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“AILERON is entering an exciting new stage of development now that it has commenced full-fledged internal drug discovery operations in Cambridge with a world-class team of scientists and a very committed group of investors,” said Joseph A. Yanchik III, CEO of AILERON. “With our broad understanding of the design and application of Stapled Peptides, AILERON is now focused on developing our product pipeline including -- driving AILERON’s lead programs to the clinic and expanding our ability to pursue new therapeutic indications and targets, such as transcription factors, that have now been shown to be within the reach of our biologic platform.”
“AILERON has continued to show great progress in advancing its lead programs in oncology towards clinical development. This has encouraged Apple Tree Partners to commit new funds for the expansion of AILERON’s efforts to create a new class of drugs that address an enormous opportunity unmet by current therapeutics,” said Seth Harrison, M.D., managing partner of Apple Tree Partners.
“AILERON and its collaborators now appear to have solved a major challenge of the pharmaceutical industry by building a broad biologics platform that generates compounds with pharmacological properties typically found in small molecules. Novartis Venture Fund is delighted to make a second investment in AILERON at this time,” said Campbell Murray, M.D., a managing director at NVF.
About AILERON Therapeutics, Inc.
AILERON Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, MA that is developing the first generation of peptide therapeutics directed at intra-cellular protein-protein interaction targets that are not addressable by current drug modalities. AILERON’s proprietary cell penetrating Stapled Peptide technology is being applied to generate breakthrough therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. AILERON believes that Stapled Peptides have the potential to become a major new class of drugs for intracellular and extracellular targets across multiple therapeutic areas. For more information please visit www.aileronrx.com.
Contact:
AILERON Huw M. Nash, Ph.D., 617-995-2807 VP, Corporate Development huw_nash@aileronrx.com or Suda Communications LLC Paul Kidwell, 617-296-3854 paulkidwell@comcast.net
Source: AILERON Therapeutics, Inc.
