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Fundraisings and IPOs

Date: 2021-05-13

Type of information: Series A financing round

Company: Flare Therapeutics (USA - MA)

Investors: Third Rock Ventures (USA - MA) Boxer Capital (USA-CA) Nextech Invest (CH) Casdin Capital (USA-NY) Invus Financial Advisors (USA-NY) Eventide Asset Management (USA-MA)

Amount: $82 million

Funding type: series A financing round

Planned used: The Series A will support Flare’s further advancement of its lead program in precision oncology toward the clinic. In addition, the company will continue to build its unique engine and proprietary assays to discover small molecules that target transcription factors at switch sites. Flare Therapeutics is opening up a new therapeutic space with a novel approach to decipher the biology of transcription factors to develop small molecule medicines. Based on insights from the seminal work of its scientific founders, Flare’s team has uncovered ‘switch sites,’ druggable regions that are key targets for transcription factor regulation to address mutations that cause disease. Its pipeline of drug programs addresses well-validated transcription factors, initially focused on precision oncology with future potential in neurology, rare genetic disorders, immunology and inflammation. Scientific co-founders and advisors of Flare include world-renowned experts with decades of experience understanding the biology and structure of transcription factors. Fraydoon Rastinejad, PhD, Flare co-founder, Wellcome-Trust Senior Investigator and Professor at the University of Oxford, is a world leader in the structure and function of transcription factors. Dr. Rastinejad has blazed a new understanding of how transcription factor complexes associate and cooperatively interact to facilitate DNA recognition. His scientific focus has included nuclear receptors and more recently bHLH-PAS proteins, where he demonstrated the bi-directional tuning of these transcription factors with synthetic ligands. Steven McKnight, PhD, Flare co-founder and chair of the Flare scientific advisory board, Professor at the University of Texas, Southwestern, is a transcription factor pioneer and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. McKnight’s notable work includes the discovery of leucine zipper transcription factors, unlocking the druggability of the non-nuclear receptor transcription factor HIF2A and co-discovery the phenomena of phase separation by low-complexity domains. He is also a successful serial entrepreneur, co-founding the transcription factor companies Tularik and Peloton. Mitchell Lazar, MD, PhD, Flare co-founder, Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is a pioneer for his modern approach to understanding the linkage between genetic, environmental, and circadian mechanisms to gene control and disease. Dr. Lazar is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. Among his notable discoveries are linking circadian rhythms and metabolism via the nuclear receptor REV-ERB, the hormone resistin, and the importance of PPARG in adipocytes. Stephen Frye, PhD, Flare advisor, Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor and co-director of the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology (CICBDD) and Drug Discovery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a prolific medicinal chemist and chemical biologist and a leader in the chemical biology of chromatin and gene regulation. Through the CICBDD, Dr. Frye has helped foster numerous collaborative academic drug discovery projects including one program currently progressing through multiple clinical trials. Prior to joining UNC, he was the worldwide vice president of discovery medicinal chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline. At GSK, the teams led by Stephen successfully developed three FDA approved drugs: Avodart, Tykerb, and Pazopanib. Robert Sims, PhD, Flare co-founder and chief scientific officer, is an industry leader in the drug discovery of gene control. Prior to joining Flare, Dr. Sims was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Third Rock Ventures and is a former founding scientist and senior vice president of research at Constellation Pharmaceuticals, where he helped establish its integrated epigenetics platform. At Constellation, Robert led the discovery and translational efforts of Pelabresib, a small molecule BET bromodomain inhibitor in Phase 3 for the treatment of myelofibrosis.  

Others: Flare Therapeutics was launched in 2021 and is backed by founding investor Third Rock Ventures, Boxer Capital, Nextech Invest, Casdin Capital, Invus Financial Advisors and Eventide Asset Management.  

Therapeutic area: Neurological diseases - Inflammatory diseases - Immunological diseases - Rare diseases - Genetic diseases

Is general: Yes