Nexo Therapeutics has emerged from stealth mode with a successful $60 million Series A financing round led by Versant Ventures, along with participation from New Enterprise Associates and Cormorant Asset Management. The company has also announced a strategic research collaboration with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Nexo Therapeutics aims to address the challenge of targeting fundamental drivers of cancer by leveraging innovations in covalent chemistry and chemical biology. Many oncology targets are difficult to tackle using conventional ligand discovery approaches due to selectivity optimization and pharmacology issues. Nexo’s platform, CODON (Covalent Discovery and Optimization), combines a chemistry engine with chemical biology capabilities to systematically address these challenges.
CODON uses a proprietary library with diverse and innovative covalent chemistries, along with scalable biochemical and in-cell proteomics, to identify potential hit compounds and rapidly optimize them for in vivo studies. Importantly, CODON employs covalent fragments against all ligandable amino acids, enabling discovery against targets that were previously difficult to approach.
The company’s chemical biology capability, INFINI-T (Informed Profile Before Initiation of Target), employs chimeric fusion proteins to gain detailed information about target biology and pharmacology. These chimeric proteins can be controlled by small molecules in cellular and in vivo models, providing insights into target inhibition depth, duration, and selectivity. This information aids in medicinal chemistry and decreases the time and resources required to develop drug candidates.
Nexo’s platform offers the potential to create effective treatments for cancer and other diseases. The company’s focus on innovative approaches to address challenging targets aligns with the ever-evolving landscape of cancer biology. With the support of their investors and strategic research collaboration, Nexo Therapeutics aims to develop a pipeline of differentiated therapeutics to provide new treatment options for cancer patients.
