Pro­tein degra­da­tion 2.0? Third Rock sinks $56M in­to Cedil­la's un­usu­al ap­proach

Third Rock Ven­tures is trot­ting out the lat­est play­er in the hot space of pro­tein degra­da­tion, in­fus­ing the new start­up with $56 mil­lion in launch mon­ey to find out if its un­con­ven­tion­al ap­proach to junk­ing pro­teins works bet­ter than its ri­vals.

The up­start goes by Cedil­la Ther­a­peu­tics, and it’s en­ter­ing a field of drug de­vel­op­ment that’s pick­ing up a lot of steam this year. The con­cept be­hind the emerg­ing space is sim­ple enough: where pro­tein in­hi­bi­tion has led to some ad­vanced med­i­cines, de­grad­ing pro­teins could prove a more fruit­ful so­lu­tion. The ap­proach could have ma­jor ben­e­fits over tra­di­tion­al small-mol­e­cule strate­gies, in­clud­ing the po­ten­tial to cut down sys­temic drug ex­po­sure and the abil­i­ty to tack­le tar­get pro­teins once con­sid­ered un­drug­gable.

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