FogPharma, a Cambridge, Masachussetts-based biopharmaceutical company developing helicon polypeptides, has raised $178 million in a Series D funding round.
The round includes new investors ARCH Venture Partners, Milky Way Investments, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and existing investors VenBio Partners, Deerfield Management, GV, Cormorant Asset Management, T Rowe Price Associates, Invus, Farallon Capital Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, Casdin Capital, and PagsGroup.
Led by CEO Gregory Verdine, FogPharma is advancing a broad pipeline of Helicon polypeptide therapeutics against important and biologically validated cancer targets with the goal of providing new targeted treatment options for significant cancer patient populations.
In connection with the Series D Financing, Rick Klausner, MD, has been appointed to FogPharma’s board of directors. Klausner is currently the founder and chief scientist of Altos Labs and founder and chairman of Lyell Immunopharma. He was founder and director of Juno Therapeutics and founder and director of GRAIL. He is also the chairman of Sonoma Biotherapeutics and co-founder and chairman of Lifemine Therapeutics.
Previously, Klausner served as senior vice president, chief medical officer and chief opportunity officer of Illumina Corporation and as executive director for global health for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He was appointed by Presidents Clinton and Bush as the eleventh director of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) between 1995 and 2001.
Klausner served as chief of the Cell Biology and Metabolism Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development as well as a past president of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. He has served in senior advisory roles to the US, Norwegian, Qatari and Indian governments.
