After seeding a fledgling scientific effort focused on the biologic implications of regulating proteins, Third Rock and The Column Group are throwing $25 million behind a startup biotech--Nurix--that hopes to blaze a new path in small molecule drug development.
In many ways the upstart follows a classic Third Rock pattern: Seed initial discovery work to get a coherent idea of the product potential and timelines involved in drug development while picking the brains of some of the top researchers in the field. And then the VC--sometimes working with partners--provides the kind of cash necessary to aim at some proof-of-concept evidence that they're on the right track for product development.
In this case the focus is the ubiquitin proteasome system, the body's 24/7 janitorial service for the cell. It degrades and cleans up targeted proteins inside the cell, regulating cellular processes and maintaining protein homeostasis in a way that can have profound implications for a wide variety of diseases. And the biotech signaled today that it has a particular interest in oncology as it sets out to explore the possibilities of both speeding and slowing the degradation process.
Third Rock and The Column Group funneled $6 million into the seed round for Nurix, which has brought together three key Howard Hughes investigators: John Kuriyan and Michael Rapé of the University of California, Berkeley and Arthur Weiss from the University of California, San Francisco. Third Rock is based in Boston but a couple years ago set up a team in the San Francisco hub to start replicating the kind of biotechs it specializes in, preferring to build from the ground up.
In another classic Third Rock signature, one of its venture partners is running the show during the ramp-up phase. Mark Goldsmith is the interim CEO. He also is chairman of Constellation. CSO Mark Gallop, meanwhile, co-founded XenoPort.
"Nurix's platform approach is applicable to a wide array of targets within the ubiquitin proteasome system, and has the potential to enhance or inhibit protein degradation," said Gallop. "This may allow us to promote the degradation of oncogenes or protect naturally occurring tumor suppressors from being destroyed in the cell. We believe the flexibility of this strategy combined with the ability to engineer high selectivity for specific ligase-substrate interactions makes this a powerful product engine with the potential to treat a number of serious diseases."
- here's the release
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