Less than three months after breaking cover with an impressive $102 million series A, Scorpion has whipped up another major funding round, nabbing $162 million for its next-gen cancer drugs.
The oversubscribed financing was led by some big names, and the full list is a long one. Boxer Capital of Tavistock Group, EcoR1 Capital, LLC, Omega Funds and Vida Ventures led the round, with participation from new investors Surveyor Capital Management, Invus Public Equites L.P., Wellington Management Company, Nextech, OrbiMed, Casdin Capital LLC, Woodline Partners LP, Logos Capital, Janus Henderson Investors and other undisclosed institutional investors, as well as existing investors Atlas Venture and Abingworth.
Scorpion has now raised $270 million in less than a year and will put that haul toward its “drug hunting engine” and developing its own internal candidates. The latter include new protein targets, discovered by the biotech, which it says have “the potential to transform cancer treatment paradigms for large patient populations.”
It also wants to design best- or first-in-class drugs against known, high-impact oncogenes “to more exquisitely target tumor tissue across both primary and metastatic lesions,” as well as moving beyond oncogenes to create new meds against a set of non-enzymatic, “undruggable” targets.
Everything is still preclinical in development terms, but it aims to pick a leading candidate this year from the platform and kick-start clinical trials from 2022. The biotech operates this platform under a “precision oncology 2.0” mantra.
“We are grateful to our new and existing investors for their commitment to our bold vision of advancing precision medicine as an option for many more people diagnosed with cancer,” said Gary Glick, Ph.D., president and CEO of Scorpion.
“This financing will enable us to increase our investment in our platform technologies and programs, as we execute with equal parts urgency and rigor to transform the standard-of-care in cancer.”