All in on nov­el tar­get GSK-3β, Ac­tu­ate Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $21M+ to bankroll am­bi­tious PhI/II

As Ac­tu­ate Ther­a­peu­tics ramps up re­cruit­ment for what it calls a “ground­break­ing” Phase I/II in­volv­ing re­frac­to­ry blood can­cers and sol­id tu­mors, the biotech has se­cured $21.7 mil­lion to fund the en­deav­or in the US and be­yond.

Found­ed in 2015 with tech li­censed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois-Chica­go and North­west­ern — ac­cord­ing to a de­tailed time­line on its web­site — Ac­tu­ate is fix­at­ed on glyco­gen syn­thase ki­nase-3β, an en­zyme as­so­ci­at­ed with a range of dis­eases from bipo­lar dis­or­der to di­a­betes. Over­ex­pres­sion of GSK-3β is “heav­i­ly im­pli­cat­ed in chemo- and ra­diore­sis­tance in tu­mor cells,” mak­ing it a promis­ing tar­get for tough-to-treat can­cers such as glioblas­toma, ovar­i­an, breast and pan­cre­at­ic can­cers.

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