Cyterix Pharmaceutics, Inc., a San Francisco, CA-based developer of novel cancer therapeutics with improved safety and efficacy, has raised $9.2m in Series A financing.
Investors include The Column Group and SV Life Sciences.
The company intends to use the funds to advance its two lead compounds through IND-enabling studies, further develop its proprietary technology platform and explore new targets within the extra-hepatic cytochrome P450 enzymes, which are greatly over-expressed in a broad range of solid tumor and hematologic cancers, but not in normal tissues.
In conjunction with the financing, Tim Kutzkey, Ph.D., Partner at The Column Group, and Lutz Giebel, Ph.D., Managing Partner at SV Life Sciences, have joined the company’s Board of Directors.
Cyterix was founded in April 2010 by:
– President and CEO Prof. Steven A. Everett*, MBA, Ph.D., who invented the OncoCYPTM-targeted prodrug discovery approach, which underpins the company’s technology platform;
– John Curd, M.D., who was the former President and CMO of Threshold Pharmaceuticals;
– Prof. Paul Ortiz de Montellano, Ph.D., who is an expert in cytochrome P450 biochemistry, based at the University of California, San Francisco.
*Prof. Everett was Head of the Drug Discovery and Translational Research Group at the University of Dundee in Scotland and supported by Cancer Research UK. The intellectual property associated with this work has been exclusively licensed to Cyterix on a worldwide basis.
FinSMEs
07/06/2011