Nexo Therapeutics recently emerged from stealth with a $60 million Series A financing led by founding investor Versant Ventures with participation from New Enterprise Associates and Cormorant Asset Management. And the company also announced a multi-year strategic research collaboration with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
This funding supports Nexo’s platform that combines the power of covalent ligand discovery and chemical biology to unlock a pipeline of novel cancer therapies directed against previously intractable targets.
The most compelling targets in oncology present significant hurdles for conventional approaches to ligand discovery, selectivity optimization, and pharmacology. And the reason is ligand discovery often depends on decades-old approaches, many of which struggle to find hits of sufficient quality. Even when there are identified starting points, it is hard to optimize for selectively, potency, and pharmacological properties.
Nexo’s platform systematically addresses each of the above issues by combining a chemistry engine with chemical biology capabilities.
The company’s chemistry engine Covalent Discovery and Optimization (CODON) is tailored to solve challenges of ligand discovery. And CODON combines a proprietary library that leverages chemical diversity and innovative covalent chemistries with scalable biochemical and in-cell proteomics. This enables the company to identify promising hit compounds and conduct rapid optimization to produce compounds for in vivo studies.
The CODON engine uses covalent fragments against all ligandable amnio acids, thus expanding beyond conventional approaches constrained to cysteine and enabling discovery against targets refractory to prior approaches. Coupled with the scale and breadth of the internal library and both biochemical and in-cell mass spectrometry capabilities, Nexo will be able to pursue challenging, high-value targets.
Nexo’s chemical biology capability Informed Profile Before Initiation of Target (INFINI-T) uses the power of chimeric fusion proteins to address target biology and pharmacology questions. And the function of these chimeric proteins are able to be controlled by small molecules in cellular and in vivo models to generate detailed information about the required depth, duration and selectivity of target inhibition. Plus, the INFINI-T platform provides target product profiles for medicinal chemistry well in advance of lead optimization. This is expected to decrease the time and capital needed to bring drug candidates to the clinic.
Leadership team and founders
Nexo is led by seasoned executives and founders with deep expertise in chemistry, cancer biology, chemical biology, drug discovery, strategy, and operations, including:
Andrew Phillips, Ph.D., CEO and Founder
Dr. Phillips was previously Managing Director at Cormorant Asset Management, LP, and Chief Financial Officer of Helix Acquisition. Before joining Cormorant, he was the President and Chief Executive Officer of C4 Therapeutics. Before joining C4 Therapeutics, Andy was Senior Director, Center for Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Previously, he was a Professor of Chemistry at Yale University and a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado.
Michael Kim, Ph.D., COO and Co-Founder
Dr. Kim brings extensive experience in strategy, business development, financing, and operations to Nexo. Before Nexo, he held various business development and strategy roles at Alkermes, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, FORUM Pharmaceuticals, and ARIAD Pharmaceuticals. More recently, he served as Chief Business Officer of C4 Therapeutics, where he established partnerships with Biogen and Roche and was a key contributor to the creation of the operational model and pipeline.
Rhamy Zeid, Ph.D., VP, Head of Biology and Co-Founder
Dr. Zeid brings deep expertise in small molecule oncology drug discovery, chemical biology and chromatin biology. Before joining Nexo, he served as Head of Discovery Biology at Nested Therapeutics, where he helped build a precision oncology pipeline. Previously, he was Head of Target Biology at C4 Therapeutics, where he built a cross-discipline team and contributed to platform capabilities and projects.
John Athanosopoulos, VP, Head of Operations and Co-Founder
Athanasopoulos has 25 years of experience across research and operational roles, most recently guiding early-stage therapeutics companies in defining and implementing their operational strategies. He has led the creation of corporate headquarters for multiple emerging biotechs, and before joining Nexo, he held senior leadership roles at Proteovant Therapeutics, Jnana Therapeutics, and C4 Therapeutics.
Joe Patel, Ph.D., VP, Head of Discovery
Dr. Patel is a seasoned structural biologist and preclinical project leader who has led numerous small molecule discovery efforts focusing on exploiting fragment-based drug discovery. Before joining Nexo, Dr. Patel was VP Structural Biology at Treeline Biosciences, where he built out a cross-discipline, cross-site lead discovery team. He previously held research leadership roles at C4 Therapeutics and AstraZeneca and began his career at Astex Pharmaceuticals.
KEY QUOTES:
“For many cancer patients there are no therapies that target the fundamental drivers of their disease. At Nexo, we are leveraging innovations in covalent chemistry and chemical biology to enable targeting these fundamental drivers. Our deep expertise in cancer biology and medicinal chemistry will allow us to efficiently advance therapies that provide new treatment options.”
— Andrew Phillips, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Nexo
“The Nexo platform is a unique combination of capabilities that can be operated at scale and that offers potential to create effective treatments for cancer and other diseases. We are proud to lead this Series A financing and partner with the highly experienced Nexo team to create a pipeline of differentiated therapeutics.”
— Carlo Rizzuto, Ph.D., managing director at Versant Ventures and a Nexo board member
“We are excited to support Nexo’s bold vision. Cancer biology continues to provide promising but challenging targets that require innovative approaches, and we look forward to working with the team to translate recent discoveries into novel therapies.”
— Ali Behbahani, M.D., general partner at NEA and a Nexo board member
“The Nexo team has unique insights into drug targets that could support the next wave of covalent drugs, and additionally they have the operational experience needed to bring progress for patients in need.”
— Bihua Chen, founder and general partner at Cormorant Asset Management
