Flashpoint Therapeutics – a company developing nanotechnology-enabled therapeutics for cancer and other diseases – recently announced a $10 million seed funding round led by Beta Lab, a leading deep tech venture capital firm headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with participation from leading private equity investor Russell Carson’s CS Venture Opportunities Fund.
This funding round will be used to advance its first therapeutic candidate in oncology, nominate a second development candidate, and advance multiple internal and partnered discovery programs. And Flashpoint will also use the funds to expand its team and enhance the platform to develop best-in-class multi-targeted RNA, CRISPR, and peptide therapeutics with unique characteristics.
The company nanostructures are all-in-one formulations that kinetically tune and co-deliver precise combinations of therapeutic components. And this approach overcomes the limitations of current technologies that rely on mixing therapeutic components with little control over their co-delivery or structural presentation. The company’s proprietary discovery platform was founded on nanotechnology research developed over the past ten years in the laboratory of Chad Mirkin, Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University.
Validated with numerous in-vivo models, this technology enables the development of therapeutic candidates with superior product profiles by co-delivering diverse payloads to the right target cells with precise stoichiometry, optimized structure-function relationship, and synchronized activation kinetics. And this capability overcomes major limitations of current therapeutics that have focused on defining potent components but cannot control how they work together.
The company’s initial candidate will be a first-in-class cancer immunotherapy that delivers precise cocktails of immune stimulatory molecules with nanoscale architecture and activation kinetics optimized to induce robust, coordinated anti-tumor immune response. And this approach yields 35 times increased co-delivery of therapeutic components to immune cells, 80 times stronger immune activation, and 650% greater tumor killing.
With the same drug components that are ineffective in conventional formulations, Flashpoint immunotherapies have shown promise for treating breast cancer, lymphoma, cervical cancer, melanoma, colon cancer, glioma, and prostate cancer. And based on these studies, the company will advance the best candidates into clinical trials.
The preclinical studies beyond immuno-oncology have demonstrated that Flashpoint’s technology can enhance virtually all therapeutic modalities, including RNA, peptide, and CRISPR by enabling advanced uptake by target cells outside of the liver, cargo co-delivery, stability in circulation, target activation, and reduced immunogenicity. And a proof of concept clinical study using Flashpoint’s technology has demonstrated delivery of nucleic acid cargo to the brain. Flashpoint is planning to partner with leading companies in nucleic acid and peptide therapeutics to develop best-in-class therapeutic candidates in these areas.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are thrilled to announce a $10 million seed financing round led by Beta Lab, a leading deep tech venture capital firm. Biotechnology has created tools capable of modulating any disease process. To translate these tools into cures, we need to get the right combinations into the right cells in the right structure to induce their function at the right time. By solving these challenges for the first time, Flashpoint’s technology has consistently transformed ineffective components into highly effective therapies based on preclinical studies. This substantial investment will allow us to move our candidates into the clinic.”
— Adam Margolin, Ph.D., CEO & Founder, Flashpoint Therapeutics
“Effective cancer therapy requires co-activating multiple pathways in the same cell. But current drugs just mix together components and hope they randomly come together at the right place and time. Flashpoint overcomes limitations of this approach by integrating therapeutic components within nanostructures that control their co-delivery and coordinated activation of the multiple pathways required for the immune system to kill tumors.”
— Chad Mirkin, Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University
“Flashpoint’s technology stands out from other treatment modalities in the market. Extensive data shows its ability to consistently improve therapy effectiveness, and the platform’s elegant design allows it to be added to existing candidates. Any company partnering with Flashpoint stands to gain a unique advantage over the competition. It would be almost negligent not to test if Flashpoint’s platform can enhance candidates in their pipeline.”
“Adam brings a deeply personal mission to the company. Motivated by the loss of his mother to cancer at a young age, he has dedicated his career to developing novel cancer therapies. We are eager to support Adam in his passionate mission to develop a new class of breakthrough therapies to benefit patients.”
— Abdulrahman Al-Olayen, Managing Director of Beta Lab
“We invest in transformative technologies and Flashpoint’s superior technologies have the potential to transform the way that therapeutics are developed.”
— Quinten Stevens, General Partner of CS Venture Opportunities Fund
