The round was led by Bayer joined by additional institutional and strategic investors including Agent Capital, Ipsen and Longwood Fund.
Leaps by Bayer will be actively participating in the Pyxis investment via two representatives on the company’s Board, Dr. Lucio Iannone and Dr. Jak Knowles. In addition, Dr. Vemuri of Agent Capital has also joined the Board in conjunction with the financing. The Board of Directors will be chaired by John Flavin and David Steinberg, Partner at Longwood Fund, will serve as Pyxis’s Chief Executive Officer.
Founded by Thomas Gajewski, MD, PhD, professor of Medicine, Pathology and the Ben May Cancer Institute at the University of Chicago Medicine; Longwood Fund; and John Flavin, seasoned life sciences executive and entrepreneur; with the support of the University of Chicago Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Pyxis Oncology is an immuno-oncology company focused on developing novel therapies for patients to defeat difficult to treat cancers.
Built on the research of Dr. Gajewski, Pyxis is pursuing promising novel targets derived from the latest insights into the tumor microenvironment.
The company has generated preclinical data on these targets and is developing a pipeline of novel antibodies with the potential to help new patient populations not currently served by today’s immunotherapies.
Pyxis’s SAB will be chaired by Dr. Gajewski and will include:
– Michael B. Atkins, MD, Deputy Director of the Georgetown-Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Scholl Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Oncology at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
– Lisa H. Butterfield, PhD, Vice President of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and Adjunct Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco.
– Alan Korman, PhD, Senior Vice President of Human Immunology at Vir Biotechnology and Former Vice President of Immuno-Oncology Discovery at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
– Jason Luke, MD, FACP, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cancer Immunotherapeutics Center at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
FinSMEs
18/07/2019