Flagship Ventures and Third Rock Ventures have joined hands to launch a new biotech company in Cambridge, MA, pumping a $35 million Series A round into a venture that will build on some cutting-edge science devoted to protein engineering and structural biology.
"By harnessing improved structural understanding of the functions of individual protein domains and the maturation of several technologies for protein design, Eleven (Biotherapeutics) will take a ‘medicinal chemistry-like' approach to the development of protein-based therapeutics," says the company in a release. Their initial focus will be on new drugs to treat inflammatory conditions and coagulation disorders.
"This is a very exciting time within the molecular biology community. The combination of new understanding of cellular and molecular processes with new, highly sophisticated technologies for protein manipulation provide unprecedented opportunities to target specific aspects of disease processes," said MIT Professor K. Dane Wittrup. "We can now offer hope for promising new ways to treat disease."
Eleven has an impressive list of scientific founders: Reza Dana and Gregory Verdine from Harvard, K. Christopher Garcia from Stanford, Casey Weaver from the University of Alabama and Wittrup.
- check out the press release for more info
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