Pfiz­er, No­var­tis jump in­to an $84M de­vel­op­ment round for UK can­cer drug stars at Ar­tios

Can­cer hasn’t lost its siz­zle for biotech in­vestors.

VCs at Pfiz­er and No­var­tis have jumped in­to an $84 mil­lion round for Ar­tios, a Cam­bridge, UK-based biotech with an ex­ec­u­tive crew that played key roles in dis­cov­er­ing and de­vel­op­ing As­traZeneca’s PARP star Lyn­parza.

Lyn­parza got the first-mover ad­van­tage in PARP — and a block­buster com­mer­cial­iza­tion pact with Mer­ck — af­ter As­traZeneca picked it up in the $210 mil­lion Ku­DOS buy­out, where Ar­tios CEO Niall Mar­tin and CSO Graeme Smith had played an im­por­tant part in work­ing on DNA re­pair path­ways. Just as Lyn­parza works by dis­rupt­ing the DNA dam­age re­sponse — DDR — sys­tems that al­low can­cer cells to adapt and sur­vive, Mar­tin and Smith have re­turned to the field to de­vel­op a new pipeline of ther­a­pies that can go PARP one bet­ter.

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