Little U.S.-China startup Signet Therapeutics has bagged a second seed round worth around $10 million as plots a path to the clinic.
The new round was led by 5Y Capital (Morningside Venture) with help from Yael Capital and Blue Ocean Capital as well as existing investors Tiantu Capital and Sky9 Capital.
Founded in 2020, Signet now has $20 million to its name, and, though a small haul, the Signet exec team is still hoping to do mighty things and is eyeing up the cash for two first-in-class oncology treatments to barrel into new clinical trials.
And that’s not all; it’s also looking to boost its platform of disease models to other cancer areas and “empower target discovery and pharmacodynamics studies at other pharmaceutical companies on a greater scale,” according to a statement.
The biotech is led by Haisheng Zhang, Ph.D., with his core team members from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Together, they have developed what they describe as a “unique platform of disease models” based on real-world cancer genomics data to simulate drug effects in 3D organ tissues.
This, they believe, can bear a closer resemblance to human biology and produce pharmacodynamics data with “higher relevance to clinical performance,” therefore helping them make better bets on new drugs.
Signet recently launched a drug discovery program with AI drug R&D company XtalPi; just this week, the pair boosted their collab to include a new first-in-class program against a “novel cancer target identified by Signet,” though no further target details were shared.