Initial Therapeutics, a South San Francisco, CA-based biotechnology company, raised $75m in Series A funding.
Apple Tree Partners created the company and made the initial investment.
Co-founded by Jamie H.D. Cate, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology at the University of California (UC) Berkeley; Brian Paegel, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry, and Biomedical Engineering at UC Irvine; and Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., Professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at UC San Francisco (UCSF) and Chemistry at UC Berkeley, Initial Therapeutics was created to make medicines that block notoriously difficult-to-drug protein targets with a new mode of action: selective termination of protein synthesis (STOPS). Initial developed its proprietary STOPS platform to discover new therapeutics based on the recently demonstrated scientific premise that translation of a specific protein can be selectively interrupted at the moment in which its linear sequence is first produced in the exit tunnel of the ribosome.
Spiros Liras, Ph.D., is the founding CEO of the company and a venture partner at ATP.
FinSMEs
01/05/2023