RTW makes new investment in Biomea Fusion – RTW Venture Fund, alongside other investment vehicles of RTW Investments, LP – its investment manager – and other investment firms, has participated in a $56m Series A financing round for Biomea Fusion.
Biomea is a US-based privately held precision oncology company dedicated to developing innovative medicines targeting specific cancer driving mutations. Biomea plans to use the proceeds from the financing round to advance the development of its portfolio of irreversible inhibitors, including a potentially first-in-class irreversible inhibitor of menin, a key newly recognized onco-target found in several forms of liquid and solid tumors.
The company’s investment in Biomea is its twelfth portfolio company addition in 2020.
Roderick Wong, MD, managing partner and chief investment officer of the investment manager, said: “We are delighted to support Biomea’s pioneering approach to develop a first-in-class irreversible menin inhibitor, as well as continue to expand its precision oncology pipeline to create targeted treatments for patients suffering from cancer. The addition of Biomea further complements our focus on targeted oncology and commitment to invest in innovative therapeutic modalities.”
Biomea Fusion’s goal is to revolutionise drug development in order to create better therapies for patients. They say that medicines today are often toxic and unselective, working only for a small percentage of patients and leaving behind a trail of negative side effects. they aspire to change this paradigm and are developing highly selective, targeted medicines, that address known cell mutations in patients that have been pre-selected to respond effectively to these therapies.
Biomea’s menin/MLL programme is at the preclinical stage and it is researching two other oncology targets.