Synnovation Therapeutics – a precision medicine company developing small molecule therapies optimized to achieve best-in-class pharmacology against highly validated disease targets – has launched with a $102 million Series A. The funding was led by Third Rock Ventures with participation from Nextech, Lilly Asia Ventures, Sirona Capital, and Cormorant Asset Management.
The company was founded by a world-class medicinal chemistry team with a track record of developing best-in-class therapeutics. And the proceeds will fund the advancement of the company’s clinical and preclinical pipeline, including SNV1521 and SNV4818, as well as additional programs.
Synnovation’s pipeline was built around highly validated precision oncologic targets where greater potency, selectivity and optimized pharmaceutical properties have the potential to address liabilities in existing standards of care, and meaningfully improve patient outcomes. And the company’s lead program, SNV1521, is a potentially best-in-class, potent, highly selective and CNS penetrant PARP1 inhibitor.
The PARP1 isoform selective inhibition is emerging as one of the most exciting new approaches to combat solid tumors, offering the potential to create new and well-tolerated therapeutic approaches that attack genetic and pharmacologic vulnerabilities of cancer. And the company is initiating a Phase I study and anticipates dosing its first patient in the coming weeks.
Synnovation’s second program targets oncogenic PI3K-alpha, utilizing multiple distinct mutant-selective approaches. And the company’s first development candidate SNV4818 is a potent, and potentially best-in-class mutant selective PI3K-alpha inhibitor. Plus, SNV4818 is differentiated from competitor molecules by virtue of its excellent selectivity for H1047X and moderate selectivity over relevant E545/542X mutants.
While at Incyte, the management team worked together for more than a decade and contributed to the discovery of five approved drugs including Jakafi (ruxolitinib), Olumiant (baricitinib), Pemazyre (pemigatinib), Tabrecta (capmatinib), and Opzelura (topical ruxolitinib). And these novel medicines have become important treatments for many diseases, including myelofibrosis and polycythemia vera, graft-vs-host disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cholangiocarcinoma, non-small-cell lung cancer, atopic dermatitis, and vitiligo.
Synnovation Leadership
1.) Wenqing Yao, Ph.D., Founder and CEO, was most recently EVP and Head of Discovery Chemistry at Incyte, where he spent 19 years. While at Incyte, Dr. Yao led a chemistry team which discovered over 30 clinical compounds and five approved drugs including Jakafi, Olumiant, Pemazyre, Tabrecta, and Opzelura. Dr. Yao joined Incyte in early 2002 as one of the founding scientists and contributed to the establishment of Incyte’s world-class small molecule drug discovery group.
2.) Liangxing Wu, Ph.D., Co-Founder and SVP Drug Discovery, was most recently Executive Director, Medicinal Chemistry at Incyte, where he spent nearly 10 years working in drug discovery and contributed to the discovery of multiple clinical compounds and FDA approved drug Pemazyre.
3.) Phillip Liu, Ph.D., SVP Head of Biology, has over 20 years of experience in biotech and pharma, including 17 years at Incyte, where he led a cell and molecular biology group that supported Incyte’s discovery pipeline and collaborated closely with Drs. Yao and Wu on FGFR and PD-L1 small molecule programs. Plus, he was most recently executive director of oncology at Kymera Therapeutics.
4.) Kevin O’Hayer, M.D., Ph.D., SVP Head of Clinical Development is an Medical Oncology physician-scientist who most recently led the Oral PD-L1 program as VP, GPH at Incyte. And Dr. O’Hayer also developed clinical programs with multiple JAK inhibitors in inflammatory conditions and COVID-19.
The Board of Directors at Synnovation includes Ting Feng, Ph.D., Sirona Capital; Reid Huber, Ph.D., Third Rock Ventures; Judith Li, Lilly Asia Ventures (observer); Jigar Raythatha, Third Rock Ventures; Thilo Schroeder, Ph.D., Nextech; Liangxing Wu, Ph.D., Synnovation; and Wenqing Yao, Ph.D., Synnovation.
KEY QUOTES:
“At Synnovation, we have assembled a top-notch team dedicated to fostering a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach as advocated by my mentor Dr. Ralph F. Hirschman, who ardently believed that the collaboration between creative chemists and outstanding biologists could lead to remarkable discoveries. Our goal is to develop best-in-class therapies, ultimately aiming to enhance the lives of patients. We look forward to advancing in the clinic with SNV1521, a novel PARP1 selective inhibitor, as we continue to grow our potential best-in-class pipeline of agents.”
– Wenqing Yao, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Synnovation
“Synnovation was founded by one of the most accomplished medicinal chemistry teams in biopharma. This highly experienced leadership team has a rich history of successful drug discovery and development, and a passion to build further on this success. We are excited to be a part of this company and look forward to what this stellar team will accomplish as it takes its decades of experience and applies them to an entirely new set of R&D challenges.”
– Reid Huber, Ph.D., board member at Synnovation and partner at Third Rock Ventures
