Seattle-based Talus Bioscience has raised $11.2 million in an early fundraising round, money that will go toward advancing the biotech’s portfolio of preclinical cancer programs and help build out the biotech’s drug discovery platform.
California VC Two Bear Capital led the charge for the “seed+” round, with participation from WRF Capital, NFX, YC Continuity Fund, Funders Club VC and BoxOne Ventures.
Talus Bio is targeting a challenging transcription factor linked to prostate cancer, plus brachyury-driven cancers. Brachyury is a transcription factor that regulates tumor development in chordoma—a rare bone tumor that forms in the spine or base of the skull.
Transcription factors are genome-regulating proteins that can direct which genes are turned on or off. However, when the process goes awry, the proteins can drive certain disease processes, such as cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases, fibrosis and neurological conditions.
Talus Bio’s new funds will also go toward expanding the biotech’s therapeutics discovery platform, dubbed Multiplexed Assays for the Rational Modulation Of Transcription Factors (MARMOT). The technology combines AI, next-gen proteomics, synthetic chemistry and computational biology, to quickly identify potential drug candidates, according to an Aug. 20 release.
“With our growing team of leading data scientists, we can use tens of millions of data points generated from the MARMOT platform to predict the best places to look for new molecules to block disease-causing transcription factors,” Talus CEO and co-founder Alex Federation, Ph.D., said in the company release. “We’re just getting started as we source new partners to help advance the dozens of promising transcription factor candidates we have discovered to date.”
The founder-led biotech launched in 2020, with co-founder Lindsay Pino, Ph.D., on board as chief technology officer. Together, the Talus team is searching for therapeutics for the historically difficult-to-reach transcription factors by knocking them off of DNA.
Since inception, Talus has received more than $7.3 million in grants, plus $8.5 million in additional venture funds.