Less than three months after publicly launching, Scorpion Therapeutics, a cancer-focused precision medicine startup founded by serial biotech entrepreneur Gary Glick, has brought in $162 million in an oversubscribed Series B round.
The round was led by Boxer Capital of Tavistock Group, EcoR1 Capital, Omega Funds and Vida Ventures, with participation from new investors Surveyor Capital Management, Invus Public Equites, Wellington Management Company, Nextech, OrbiMed, Casdin Capital, Woodline Partners, LP, Logos Capital and Janus Henderson Investors, as well as existing investors Atlas Venture and Abingworth.
Founded in early 2020, Scorpion made its official debut in October with a $108 million round to develop treatments that target specific, individualized genetic targets linked to a patient’s specific type of cancer. The Boston-based startup currently employs about 30 people and plans to use part of the new funding to hire another 20 or so by year's end, Glick said.
Scorpion divides its work into three tracks, the first focused on genes known to potentially cause cancer, the second on non-enzymatic, "undruggable" targets and the third on new protein targets that Scorpion thinks could be transformative for cancer treatment.
"The financing will allow us to pursue all three of those in parallel, and a number of different initiatives and programs within each of those tracks," Glick said. "We'll also continue to build out our drug-hunting engine, and that capability will allow us to process additional classes of targets."
In Glick's long-term vision, Scorpion will be able to scale its precision medicine platform to bring targeted therapies to wide swaths of patient classes and cancer types. The startup is currently working on several drug candidates, which it plans to develop in-house and ultimately commercialize. In a statement, Glick said Scorpion would name its first developmental candidate this year and begin clinical trials in 2022.
Although he emphasized that Scorpion is focused first and foremost on oncology applications, Glick said some of the treatments his startup develops — particularly new ways of modulating cells — may apply "conceptually" to other therapeutic areas.
"In targeted oncology, the hallmark of the approach is to identify specific molecular defects in specific tumors and develop precision medicine for them," Glick said. "To the extent those genetic alterations can be found in other types of diseases, yes, but the reality is... we'll probably be focused mostly on oncology."
