The round was led by Versant Ventures with participation from Apple Tree Partners and new investor Samsara BioCapital.
The company intends to use the funds to discover and develop precision medicines for kidney diseases.
Led by Eric Dobmeier, president and chief executive officer, Andrew King, DVM, Ph.D., head of renal discovery and translational medicine, and Tom Frohlich, chief business officer, Chinook is applying its proprietary discovery platform, which leverages single cell RNA sequencing, human-derived organoids and new translational models, to discover and develop therapeutics with novel mechanisms of action against key kidney disease pathways.
The company’s lead candidates are focused on rare, severe disorders with defined and rapid clinical development pathways.
These programs may also have utility in more common kidney diseases, expanding the potential patient populations.
Chinook was incubated through Versant’s Inception Sciences discovery engine in Vancouver and seeded by Versant and Apple Tree Partners.
In addition to Mr. Dobmeier, Chinook’s Board of Directors is comprised of Dr. Davis; Sam Hall, Ph.D., partner at Apple Tree Partners; Srini Akkaraju, M.D., Ph.D., managing general partner at Samsara BioCapital; and Jeremy Caldwell, Ph.D., CEO at Inception Sciences.
FinSMEs
22/08/2019