Startups, Pharma

Accent Therapeutics launches with $40 million Series A round

Company will pursue RNA-modifying protein targets to discover and develop new treatments in oncology.

A start-up focused on small-molecule targets in hematology-oncology has launched with $40 million in venture capital to pursue preclinical work.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Accent Therapeutics announced last week that it had secured the Series A funding round from a consortium including The Column Group, Atlas Venture and EcoR1 Capital. President Robert Copeland said in a phone interview the company had closed the round on Sept. 18, 2017.

The company plans to establish a drug-discovery platform focused on product candidates targeting RNA-modifying proteins, or RMPs, based on epitranscriptomics – the role of RNA structure, stability, function and translation in cell biology. The company has identified 20 RMP targets and further narrowed those down to four on which it will focus its efforts, as the Series A round would not be sufficient to study all 20 simultaneously, Copeland said. However, he said the company is not disclosing which specific cancers it will pursue, adding they will include solid tumors and hematological cancers.

Epitranscriptomics are similar in some ways to epigenetics in terms of chemical processes and enzymes involved, Copeland said. Where epitransctriptomics differs from epigenetics, Copeland said, is that it focuses on transcription of RNA into proteins rather than the transcription of DNA into RNA. Epigenetics was the focus of Copeland’s previous company, Cambridge-based Epizyme, whose lead candidate, tazemetostat, targets the epigenetic target EZH2. Other epigenetic drugs include HDAC inhibitors – such as Novartis’ Farydak (panobinostat) – and hypomethylating agents like Celgene’s Vidaza (azacitidine) and Otsuka’s Dacogen (decitabine).

The company expects the $40 million to see it through much of the necessary preclinical work and to go toward hiring scientists to conduct discovery and early development, Copeland said. However, he declined to provide a burn rate or timeline for completing preclinical work.

Research on epitranscriptomics has been ongoing for several years. In September 2014, the National Cancer Institute sponsored a workshop to explore the role of epitranscriptomic RNA modifications and transfer RNA processing in cancer progression, with a summary published online in the journal Cancer Biology & Therapy three months later.

Photo: Getty Images

Shares0
Shares0