Third Rock is push­ing one of its stealthy star­tups in­to the lime­light this morn­ing, with $60 mil­lion in fresh cap­i­tal and a plat­form tech that op­er­ates in the in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar field of im­munome­tab­o­lism.

The start­up, called Rheos Med­i­cines, has a drug dis­cov­ery tech that’s al­ready churned out two leads for the com­pa­ny that are both mov­ing in­to pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

Lar­ry Tur­ka

Rheos, found­ed last sum­mer, is dig­ging in­to the new field of im­munome­tab­o­lism, which ba­si­cal­ly tries to un­der­stand — and lat­er har­ness — how a cell’s me­tab­o­lism af­fects dis­ease pro­gres­sion.

“We want to un­der­stand which cells are dri­ving which dis­eases, and which meta­bol­ic path­ways are be­ing dys­reg­u­lat­ed by cells,” said Ab­bie Cel­niker, a Third Rock part­ner who’s cur­rent­ly serv­ing as the start­up’s in­ter­im CEO.

The com­pa­ny hopes to learn how to “tune” the meta­bol­ic path­ways to bring pa­tients with im­mune sys­tem-re­lat­ed dis­eases “back in­to bal­ance.”

The com­pa­ny has re­cruit­ed Lar­ry Tur­ka, an ex­pert in the field of reg­u­la­to­ry T cell bi­ol­o­gy, from his post at Har­vard Med­ical School and Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, to serve as the start­up’s CSO.

“I’ve been see­ing pa­tients with au­toim­mune dis­ease my whole pro­fes­sion­al life, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring drugs in­to the clin­ic to help pa­tients with tremen­dous un­met need was too good to pass up,” Tur­ka tells me.

Tur­ka said Rheos is build­ing a cat­a­logue of com­par­isons be­tween im­mune cells in dif­fer­ent states, fo­cus­ing on the meta­bol­ic dif­fer­ences of those cell types.

“If we un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween an im­mune cell that caus­es in­flam­ma­tion ver­sus an im­mune cell that sup­press­es in­flam­ma­tion, then we can use that da­ta to de­vel­op prod­ucts,” Tur­ka says.

Rheos is call­ing its cat­a­logue the Im­mune Cell En­cy­clo­pe­dia (ICE), and the plat­form has al­ready de­liv­ered two tar­gets to pur­sue. Cel­niker said the com­pa­ny isn’t yet dis­clos­ing de­tails of the pro­grams, but not­ed the com­pa­ny is fo­cus­ing on ther­a­peu­tics that tar­get CD4 and CD8 T cell sub­types, which are in­volved in au­toim­mune dis­eases like in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease, pso­ri­a­sis, vi­tili­go, and could have ap­pli­ca­tions in im­muno-on­col­o­gy.

Ryan Cohlhepp

Oth­er than pur­su­ing its own drug pro­grams, Rheos will al­so use its tech plat­form to bet­ter de­fine sub­sets of au­toim­mune dis­ease pa­tients, cre­at­ing bio­mark­ers that will help cre­ate more tai­lored drugs for in­di­vid­ual pa­tients.

“Cel­lu­lar phys­i­ol­o­gy is some­thing we un­der­stand pret­ty well, and now we’re learn­ing to mod­u­late in­di­vid­u­als’ meta­bol­ic path­ways in­stead of the one-size-fits-all ap­proach that most drugs for au­toim­mune dis­eases take now,” Cel­niker said. “It’s a much more so­phis­ti­cat­ed ap­proach.”

Cel­niker said the com­pa­ny just re­cruit­ed Ryan Cohlhepp, a for­mer VP at Take­da, to lead Rheos’ R&D. Now the com­pa­ny is on the hunt for a more per­ma­nent CEO.

Ab­bie Cel­niker. Third Rock Ven­tures

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.