NEW YORK – FogPharma on Monday raised $178 million in Series D financing to advance its lead candidate, beta-catenin inhibitor FOG-001, into the clinic next year.
New investors in the financing round included Arch Venture Partners, Milky Way Investments, and Fidelity Management & Research Company. FogPharma's existing investors also participated, including VenBio Partners, Deerfield Management, GV, Cormorant Asset Management, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates., Invus, Farallon Capital Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, Casdin Capital, and PagsGroup. Concurrent with the funding, Milky Way Investments Founder Rick Klasuner will join FogPharma's board of directors.
Proceeds from the funding round will help advance FogPharma's pipeline of "Helicon" polypeptide therapeutics, including FOG-001 and other preclinical candidates. The firm expects to file an investigational new drug application and begin clinical development of FOG-001 by mid-2023. The firm is also developing candidates targeting TEAD, NRAS, KRAS, ERG, and cyclin E1.
FogPharma selected FOG-001 as the development candidate from its beta-catenin program in March. FOG-001 can target cancers that have dysregulation of the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling pathway, which the firm estimates occurs in about 20 percent of cancers.
"FogPharma continues to make rapid progress on our moonshot mission to achieve universal druggability — a world where no targets are off-limits to medicine," FogPharma CEO Gregory Verdine said in a statement. "We believe that Helicon polypeptides, a compelling new therapeutic modality, represent the future of precision medicine."
FogPharma, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has now raised more than $350 million in financing since 2018.