Prosetta Biosciences, a Bay Area startup developing small molecule antivirals, just closed out a $31 million Series D round. It’s developing drugs that could work against a whole library of viruses, including HIV, Ebola, Hepatitis C, influenza and even rabies.
Investors in the round include Takeda Pharmaceutical Company and Alger Management. Prosetta has a huge range of interests in which it’ll direct these funds:
The net proceeds from the private placement will be used primarily for research and development, with an emphasis in the fields of central nervous system diseases and disorders, oncology, inflammation, antiinfectives, vaccines, animal health and biodefense, among other fields, and for working capital and general corporate purposes.
The company says it’s produced a series of compounds that alter the assembly of the protein shell, or capsid, that encircles the DNA or RNA genome of a virus. It’s screened tens of thousands of small molecules over the past decade, seeking out a drug that can attack a range of viral pathogens. It has isolated about three dozen that show promise.
The platform was described as an “assembly machine-focused approach to pathway, target and drug discovery” by CH Sylvester of Alger Management in a statement.
The company, though somewhat under the radar, was actually profiled a few years ago in Wired – outlining the startup’s strategy to develop a line of antivirals:
Preliminary studies—in both cell cultures and on animals—are showing that Prosetta’s approach can stop rabies, Ebola, influenza, and a number of other viruses. If, as Lingappa suspects, all viruses need help from their host cells to assemble, he may have found a strategy that can work against every virus that could ever make us sick.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The company, founded in 2002, has a drug discovery platform that works with cell-free protein synthesis. The research comes from scientists at the UCSF and the University of Washington, Seattle.
Given the fact that it’s raised this hefty round – $31 million is no small amount – perhaps there’s some validity to this approach.
