By Chris Delporte
Cyternex Inc., a developer of small-molecule, gene-targeting anticancer agents, is in the process of completing the second stage of its first-round funding.
RCT BioVentures West, of Menlo Park, Calif., and IngleWood Ventures, of San Diego, each has invested $1 million in the biotechnology start-up, but more money is on the way.
¿It is a little bit in flux,¿ Daniel Wood, IngleWood Ventures general partner and Cyternex board member, told BioWorld Today, referring to the total amount of funding. Wood said that another California-based firm is considering investing an additional $1 million, for a total of $3 million. ¿If the other firm decides not to invest,¿ Wood added, ¿Both IngleWood and RCT will invest an additional quarter million each, for a total of $2.5 million.¿
¿We are anticipating the second close of our Series A round of funding,¿ Cyternex President and CEO Thomas Farrell said, echoing Wood¿s explanation of a third major investor. ¿In addition, we also have some smaller investors.¿ Farrell said that he expects the company to pursue a Series B financing by the second half of next year. ¿We¿re just beginning to get the company up and running,¿ Farrell added.
The company currently has five employees, but plans to expand to nine by the end of next month, including hiring a director of chemistry and a director of drug evaluation.
¿We plan to stay that size until our next round of funding,¿ Farrell said.
San Diego-based Cyternex is investigating the role of dynamic 3-dimensional DNA structures in regulating cancer genes and other aspects of tumor biology. The company is focusing on the development of anticancer drug candidates that target the multiple structures and specific cancer genes. The company expects the new class of agents to provide a more effective and less toxic alternative to current chemotherapies.
Cyternex¿s lead preclinical development program is its CX1000 series of compounds, designed to regulate expression of c-myc, a well-known cancer gene. According to Cyternex, the overexpression of this gene is found in 60 percent of all cancers.
The company said that these new agents appear to block tumor growth by stabilizing 4-dimensional knots in cancer DNA, called G-quadruplexes, which prevent c-myc expression. The compounds also fold telomeres at the end of chromosomes into stabilized G-quadruplexes. This reverses the unlimited life span of cancer cells by disrupting the ability of the enzyme, telomerase, to maintain the chromosome end at a consistent length. Eighty-five percent to 90 percent of all tumors express telomerase.
¿G-quadruplex stabilization is a unique anticancer target,¿ Fred Volinsky, president of RCT BioVentures West and a member of Cyternex¿s board, told BioWorld Today. ¿This is a different mechanism than what other people are working on, and we believe that we¿re the only group working on this approach.¿
¿Our goal is to develop agents that interact with DNA, but aren¿t your conventional DNA-damaging agents,¿ Farrell said. ¿We think of DNA as a receptor, much like a protein, that you can target.¿
If all goes well, the company hopes to begin clinical trials of its lead compound in 2002.
Laurence Hurley, company founder and scientific director, developed Cyternex¿s technology. Hurley discovered and initially developed the technology while at the University of Texas at Austin. He currently is the pharmaceutical sciences chair at the University of Arizona in Tucson. One of Hurley¿s colleagues, Daniel Von Hoff, serves as chair of Cyternex¿s clinical advisory board. Von Hoff is the director of the Arizona Cancer Center and is a professor of medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center.
¿At this early stage, we are investing based on the strength of the people,¿ Wood said. ¿Laurence Hurley is a leading medicinal chemist and Dan Von Hoff is one of the country¿s leading oncologists.¿
Going forward, Volinsky said it was too early to tell which business model the company the company might pursue.
¿Our immediate focus is the preclinical development of our lead product.¿