Kronos Bio Snags $105 Million to Support Development of its Small Molecule Microarray Platform
A little more than a year after it launched, California-based Kronos Bio closed a $105 million Series A Preferred Stock financing to support the continued development of the company’s Small Molecule Microarray platform (SMM).
Kronos uses technology developed by its scientific founder Angela Koehler of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company’s technology uses chemical modulators of transcription factors as part of a small molecule discovery. The approach is suited for rapid discovery of unique ligands that can be utilized in the generation of novel modulators or degraders of challenging targets such as transcription factors. Since its launch, Kronos has demonstrated SMM’s potential to identify compounds that bind to target proteins directly or interfere at nanomolar potency with protein activity. SMM enables discovery of hits that act through a variety of mechanisms, including disruption of protein-protein or protein-DNA interactions, or indirect modulation of target protein activity by binding to co-factors or other protein complex members, the company said.
Since its launch, Kronos has been backed by a number of luminaries in the biotech industry and the latest funding round is no exception. The funding round was led by Vida Ventures, LLC and Omega Funds and included participation from Nextech, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Perceptive Advisors, Invus and Polaris Partners. Kronos’ President and Chief Executive Officer Norbert Bischofberger was also a significant participant in the funding round. Bischofberger, a longtime veteran of Gilead Sciences, took over the helm of the company last year after walking away from his role as head of R&D at Gilead. Other noted individual investors are former Kite Pharma CEO Arie Belldegrun and Gilead’s former CEO and Executive Chairman of the Board John Martin. Both Martin and Belldegrun are on the Kronos Board of Directors.
Bischofberger said the support of the “high caliber investors” in the company is exciting. He said they recognize the potential of Kronos’ technology and what it can do.
“This financing will help us advance two preclinical programs built upon hits identified from SMM screens, accelerate our research, and further expand the Kronos team in the Boston and San Francisco areas,” Bischofberger said in a statement. “We seek to challenge the historic belief that certain targets cannot be pursued. Our goal is to unlock new therapeutic approaches and bring treatments to areas with high unmet need.”
The preclinical assets Bischofberger pointed to target MYC and the Androgen Receptor (AR). The MYC family of transcription factors are master regulators of cell proliferation and differentiation, and MYC expression is dysregulated in a large proportion of human cancers. Likewise, the AR is a primary driver of disease progression in prostate cancer.
As part of the financing, Jakob Loven, a partner at Nextech, will join the board of directors of Kronos Bio.