We all aspire to have a boss who will just give you money for your next endeavor. Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., happens to have just that.
Johnson & Johnson’s former pharma R&D chief, now the CEO of FogPharma, has brought on former J&J CEO Alex Gorsky as an investor in the company’s $145 million series E. Gorsky joins a syndicate of heavyweights like RA Capital and General Catalyst who became first-time Fog investors.
Returning investors included Arch, GV and Fidelity. Another big name on the bill is serial biotech entrepreneur Alexis Borisy, who also joined the board on behalf of Nextech, which led the round.
You don’t see too many series Es in the wild these days, but the IPO markets have been rewarding more mature clinical companies in the first months of the year. Fog, evidently, found clarity in another private round.
“This financing will allow us to execute on our expanded clinical development and commercialization strategy to deliver FOG-001 to patients, while simultaneously strengthening our discovery efforts against other compelling intracellular targets that drive a range of diseases,” Mammen said.
FOG-001 is an intracellular TCF-blocking β-catenin inhibitor being tested in a phase 1/2 trial for solid tumors. Mutations of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, which the drug targets, are particularly common in colorectal cancer.
“Millions of colorectal cancer patients have been told by their oncologists that no more can be done for them. We believe FOG-001 may represent the long-awaited major technological breakthrough needed to address one of the most common yet unaddressed oncogenic signaling pathways,” Mammen said.
The med came off of Fog’s Helicon platform, which combines tunable stabilized helical peptides with computational physics and artificial intelligence to churn out new medicines.
Further cash from the fundraising will be used to support Fog’s earlier pipeline.
Even before Mammen began his tenure in March 2023, Fog has been able to pull in massive fundraising rounds. In November 2022, the company raised $178 million, which followed a $107 million series C in March 2021. Beyond FOG-001, the company lists a range of programs in preclinical development covering a variety of different cancer mutations.