Oncology startup FogPharma just closed a $145 million Series E round, the company confirmed, reaching a late stage of financing that few other biotechs have hit in recent years.
FogPharma, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., is developing cancer treatments using corkscrew-shaped peptides called helicons that could possibly better breach cells.
As CEO Mathai Mammen sees it, very few exemplary medicines shuttle off of drug companies’ pipelines, wade through clinical trials, and end up in the hands of physicians and patients in a given year. Far more often, pharma and biotech companies are pushing out drugs that are incrementally better than what came before, extending cancer patients’ survival by a few more months, halting their tumor growth for a little while longer. But FogPharma could deliver something truly unique, Mammen said.