- Kronos Bio — a biomedical innovation company known for its Small Molecule Microarray platform (SMM) — announced it raised $105 million in funding
Kronos Bio announced it has raised $105 million in Series A funding — which was co-led by Vida Ventures and Omega Funds. Nextech, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Perceptive Advisors, Invus, and Polaris Partners joined this round. And Kronos’ President and CEO Norbert Bischofberger, Ph.D. as well as board members Arie Belldegrun, M.D., FACS, and John Martin, Ph.D invested in this round as well. In conjunction with the funding round, Nextech partner Jakob Loven, Ph.D. is joining the Kronos Bio board.
When Kronos launched in May 2018, Vida had played a prominent role as a seed investor in the company. And the oversubscribed Series A round of funding was supported by new and existing investors.
“We are excited to have the continued support of high caliber investors who recognize the potential of Kronos’ technology and its team. This financing will help us advance two preclinical programs built upon hits identified from SMM screens, accelerate our research, and further expand the Kronos team in the Boston and San Francisco areas,” said Bischofberger. “We seek to challenge the historic belief that certain targets cannot be pursued. Our goal is to unlock new therapeutic approaches and bring treatments to areas with high unmet need.”
The foundation of Kronos’ Small Molecule Microarray platform (SMM) was built on more than a decade of research by its scientific founder Angela Koehler, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And SMM is ideally suited for the rapid discovery of novel modulators or degraders of historically undruggable targets, such as transcription factors.
“When we founded Kronos at Two River, we identified early on the need for support by investors who embrace cutting edge innovation,” added Joshua Kazam — a Kronos Board Member and a Director at Vida Ventures. “With this Series A round, we have expanded support with investors equally as passionate about funding scientific breakthroughs to impact how we treat some of the most challenging diseases we face today.”
And Kronos demonstrated SMM’s potential to identify compounds that bind to target proteins directly or interfere at nanomolar potency with protein activity. SMM enables discovery of hits that act through a variety of mechanisms such as disruption of protein-protein or protein-DNA interactions, or indirect modulation of target protein activity by binding to co-factors or other protein complex members.
Existing therapies are known for targeting only a minority of the body’s proteins — which are well-structured and accessible to traditional small molecule approaches. The majority of proteins, however, are disordered or lack obvious binding pockets and have historically been considered undruggable. Fortunately, Kronos’ platform enables high-throughput screens of chemical libraries against such target proteins in a more physiologically relevant context to identify biologically active small molecules.
“Since our initial investment, we have been very excited about the opportunity to identify novel therapies provided by the Kronos platform: we believe this is a huge opportunity not just for investors but more importantly, for addressing unmet needs in hard-to-treat diseases,” explained Otello Stampacchia, Ph.D. — a Kronos Board Member and founder and managing director of Omega Funds. “We are delighted to co-lead this milestone Series A financing and to be a part of the Kronos Bio team in this journey.”
Vida was launched by a group of scientists, physicians, entrepreneurs, and investors passionate about building and supporting breakthroughs in biomedicine. The Vida founders include Arie Belldegrun, M.D., FACS, Fred Cohen, M.D., D.Phil, Leonard Potter, Arjun Goyal, M.D., and Stefan Vitorovic.
“In the last year, Kronos has done an incredible job of advancing their SMM platform beyond the academic setting to uncover development opportunities on a broader scale. We are steadfast supporters of the Kronos team and their collective effort to advance first-in-class therapies into the clinic,” noted Vitorovic.
Some of the other companies Vida invested in include Allogene Therapeutics, AskBio, Homology Medicines, and Peloton Therapeutics.
“Our investment in Kronos is representative of what we aim to do with our fund at large – embrace cutting edge innovation, regardless of stage or therapeutic area, that has the potential to make a meaningful difference in the lives of patients,” commented Goyal.
