Repare Therapeutics was co-founded by researchers from Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, University of Toronto and New York University.
Repare Therapeutics, a Canada-based developer of cancer therapies, raised $68m in series A funding yesterday from a consortium that included BDC Capital, the investment arm of state-owned Business Development Bank of Canada.
BDC Capital participated through its Healthcare Venture Fund. It was joined by Fonds de solidarité FTQ, the state-mandated investment arm of the Quebec labour body, and pharmaceutical firm Celgene Switzerland as well as Versant Ventures and MPM Capital, which co-led the round.
Repare Therapeutics, which emerged from stealth yesterday after 18 months in Versant’s Discovery Engines program, is working on oncology drugs that target genetically defined weaknesses of tumour cells.
The approach integrates several fields of cell biology, including DNA repair and synthetic lethality, which exploits multiple genetic defects in order to destroy malignancies.
The company’s three co-founders include Daniel Durocher, director of the biomedical program at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, affiliated with University of Toronto, and full professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at Toronto, and Frank Sicheri, a senior investigator at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum and professor in the Departments of Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at Toronto.
The third co-founder is Agnel Sfeir, assistant professor in the Skirball Institute of Biomolecule Medicine at New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center, who was able to license her research to Repare through NYU’s drug discovery accelerator Office of Therapeutics Alliances.
The money will enable the company to move several therapeutics into the clinic.
Jerel Davis, managing director at Versant, and Todd Foley, managing director at MPM Capital, will join Repare’s board of directors.
