Cartography Biosciences, a Foster City, CA-based precision medicine company creating therapeutics guided by comprehensive antigen atlas for immuno-oncology targets, launched with $57 million in initial funding.
8VC led the Series A financing with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which led Cartography’s seed financing, and Wing VC, which was also a seed investor. The Series A financing was joined by new investors Catalio Capital Management, ARTIS Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, AME Cloud Ventures, the Cancer Research Institute, and Gaingels.
The company plans to use the proceeds to advance a pipeline of therapeutics designed to broaden the reach of next-generation cancer therapies, as well as conduct a breadth of discovery programs designed to identify novel, best-in-class target antigens across a range of cancer indications.
Led by CEO Kevin Parker, Ph.D., who founded the company alongside noted Stanford University physician-scientist-entrepreneurs Ansu Satpathy, M.D., Ph.D., and Howard Chang, M.D., Ph.D., who each head world-renowned genomics laboratories, Cartography has developed a platform that integrates computational and experimental techniques, including single-cell genomics and proteomics, with high-throughput binder discovery capabilities. The company has already profiled millions of cells across thousands of samples from both cancerous and healthy tissue. Their cell-by-cell atlas identifies optimal antigens by predicting both efficacy and off-target effects for binders against that target.
Cartography is using its modality-agnostic antigen profiling platform as a roadmap to create novel immunotherapies by identifying the targets that maximize efficacy while minimizing potentially toxic side effects.
The company’s founding scientific team includes Maxwell Mumbach, Ph.D., Caleb Lareau, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Verboon. The company’s Scientific Advisory Board is led by Carl June, M.D., along with Emma Lundberg, Ph.D., Angela Shen, M.D., M.B.A., and Joseph Fraietta, Ph.D.
FinSMEs
20/07/2022