Ver­sant-backed pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy start­up Re­pare Ther­a­peu­tics scores $82M+ in lat­est round

More than two years af­ter emerg­ing out of stealth mode with $68 mil­lion and Ver­sant as a found­ing in­vestor, pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy drug de­vel­op­er Re­pare Ther­a­peu­tics has scored an­oth­er $82.5 mil­lion to take its lead prod­uct — carved out of the biotech’s syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty plat­form — in­to the clin­ic.

Syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty is a con­cept that re­lies on the idea that while tu­mors can tol­er­ate in­di­vid­ual de­fects in DNA, com­bi­na­tions of de­fects cre­ate dis­tinct vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in can­cer cells which, when iso­lat­ed, present op­por­tu­ni­ties for pre­ci­sion ther­a­peu­tics. For in­stance, PARP in­hibitors — such as Clo­vis’ Rubra­ca, As­traZeneca’s $AZN Lyn­parza and GSK’s $GSK Ze­ju­la — were de­vel­oped to treat can­cers with mu­ta­tions in BR­CA1 or BR­CA2 genes.

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