Synthekine nabs megaround in bid to edge out Merck, Sanofi in IL-2 sprint
Nine months after launching out of Stanford with $82 million and a portfolio of engineered cytokines, Synthekine has landed a $107.5 million Series B from Deerfield Management and others to push their two lead cancer programs into the clinic.
Like a smattering of rivals, Synthekine is trying to reimagine one of the most notorious cancer drugs in history: IL-2, a synthetic version of an immune messenger molecule that proved too potent for most patients to tolerate, even though it could be highly effective at amping the immune system to attack tumors. The industry-wide hope is that new approaches to protein engineering, along with some creative thinking, could allow developers to distill the tumor-shrinking power, without all the toxicities.
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