A bet­ter ap­proach to growth fac­tors? Schol­ar Rock rais­es $47M on SMA promise

Schol­ar Rock, a biotech based of out Cam­bridge, MA, just got a $47 mil­lion in­fu­sion of cash to de­vel­op what the com­pa­ny con­sid­ers smarter, next-gen­er­a­tion growth fac­tor drugs. Their ap­proach in­volves more tar­get­ed tweak­ing than pre­de­ces­sors in the field, giv­ing pa­tients the up­side with­out some un­want­ed side ef­fects.

That’s the hope, at least, of Schol­ar Rock’s pres­i­dent and CEO Nagesh Ma­han­thap­pa. He tells me the com­pa­ny is tak­ing on spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy (SMA) first, a rare neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­ease char­ac­ter­ized by a loss of mo­tor neu­rons and pro­gres­sive mus­cle wast­ing (of­ten lead­ing to ear­ly death).

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