September 15, 2014
By Krystle Vermes, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech startup Scholar Rock has announced that it has received $20 million in a Series A round of financing.
The biotechnology company is dedicated to discovering and developing modulators that target protein growth factors in the disease environment.
The Series A financing round was led by ARCH Venture Partners, in addition to Polaris Partners and Timothy Springer. EcoR1 Capital and The Kraft Group also participated in this round.
The funding will be used to advance niche modulators from preclinical research and push them toward clinical drug development.
“This financing by an investor group with deep experience in the life sciences industry underscores the tremendous progress that the Scholar Rock team has made in establishing a novel paradigm in biologic drug discovery,” said Nagesh Mahanthappa, chief executive officer and president of Scholar Rock. “Our experienced leadership team is now ready to advance niche modulator therapeutics in important areas of unmet need such as fibrosis, musculoskeletal diseases, and autoimmunity.”
Timothy Springer and Leonard Zon, both who have links to Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, founded Scholar Rock. They developed an approach to targeting protein growth factors that is based on molecular mechanisms of activation.
Scholar Rock’s technology allows the activation mechanism of protein growth factors to be selectively regulated in specific types of cells and tissues within the disease microenvironment. In turn, modulators are able to control the key functions of growth factors in cell growth. This allows them to achieve extremely specific therapeutic effects at the site of a disease.
“Growth factors have long been recognized as extremely important disease targets,” said Amir Nashat, Cchairman of Scholar Rock and managing general partner of Polaris Partners. “Scholar Rock’s new paradigm of targeting these factors locally, thereby avoiding undesirable systemic effects, is unique and holds the promise of developing highly effective and safe therapeutics to treat many difficult to treat diseases.”
Scholar Rock’s research and development approach is aimed toward developing therapeutic candidates that are designed to improve existing therapies. The company has collaborated with Johnson & Johnson Innovation and its affiliate Janssen Biotech on research geared toward developing novel biologic therapeutics.
“Scholar Rock has assembled the expertise, technology and strategies to transform a powerful area of biology using niche modulators into the kind of new platform for drug development that we believe has the potential to build extraordinary value with significant impact on major diseases,” said Kristina Burow, managing director of ARCH Venture Partners.
