Gene regulation startup Syros Pharmaceuticals has raised a $53.1 million from 16 investors, according to regulatory filings.
This financing round was led by “a large, Boston-based public investment firm,” also includes new investors Polaris Partners, Aisling Capital and Redmile Group. The current investors – Flagship Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, WuXi PharmaTech Corporate Ventuer Fund and Alexandria Ventuer Investments – also participated in the round.
The Dana Farber and Whitehead spinout’s been well-capitalized from the outset – it last year raised a $30 million Series A to support apretty sexy new cancer therapeutics platform that uses gene control.
“Precise control of genes is at the heart of cell identity and function,” the company says. “When gene control is fundamentally altered or lost, healthy, normal cells transform into diseased cells – in essence, disease is caused by cell misidentity.”
In essence, it’s finding ways to control cancer by learning how proteins that regulation gene expression operate. It uses what it calls “super-enhancers,” that is, the kinases and transcription factors that help shape a stem cell into a nerve cell, or a skin cell or a tumor cell, as the basis for a new therapeutic platform.
The company’s developing treatments for acute myeloid leukemia – presenting findings at last month’s American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Hematologic Malignancies Meeting in Philadelphia. The company’s work has been published in both Cell and Nature. Syros says:
By mapping gene control pathways directly in human disease tissue, Syros has a unique lens by which to identify and modulate the gene switches important in disease, and to identify patients most likely to benefit from its gene control medicines.
