Ireland-based cancer-focused biotechnology company Carrick Therapeutics raised $95m today from a consortium including GV, the corporate venturing arm of conglomerate Alphabet, and drug discovery company Evotec.

The round was co-led by Arch Venture Partners, the VC firm spun out of Chicago University’s tech transfer office, and investment firm Woodford Investment Management. It further featured Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds, backed by Cambridge’s commercialisation arm, university venturing fund Cambridge Innovation Capital and Lightstone Ventures.

Founded in 2015, Carrick Therapeutics is working on a portfolio of cancer therapies, targeting the most aggressive and resistant forms of the disease. The company hopes to develop treatments precisely tailored to an individual patient’s tumour.

Carrick currently has three candidates in its pipeline, one of which is based on research conducted by Steve Jackson, professor of biology at Cambridge University and head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories. The company has not revealed details about the two remaining programs.

Carrick expects to significantly expand its pipeline through collaborations with Cancer Research UK, Cambridge University, Imperial College London and Oxford University.

Steven Gillis, managing partner at Arch Ventures Partners, and Paul Thurk, managing director for Europe at Arch, will join the board of directors.

Gillis said: “The quality of the science and assets, combined with the calibre of the management team makes Carrick Therapeutics a powerful proposition. As an investor and a scientist I look forward to Carrick Therapeutics being a dominant force in the fight against cancer.”

Thurk said: “Carrick’s world-class team and pioneering work share many of the same extraordinary attributes of other successful oncology companies we’ve helped build.  

“Except, in this case, we did not start with a specific technology, which would be our norm.  We instead started with an exemplary team of industry veterans, investigating hundreds of assets, to find the remarkable mix that now makes up Carrick.”

– This article first appeared on our sister site Global Corporate Venturing.

Ireland-based cancer-focused biotechnology company Carrick Therapeutics raised $95m today from a consortium including GV, the corporate venturing arm of conglomerate Alphabet, and drug discovery company Evotec.

The round was co-led by Arch Venture Partners, the VC firm spun out of Chicago University’s tech transfer office, and investment firm Woodford Investment Management. It further featured Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds, backed by Cambridge’s commercialisation arm, university venturing fund Cambridge Innovation Capital and Lightstone Ventures.

An insider said: “Evotec does a lot of deals and with almost as many different business models.”

Founded in 2015, Carrick Therapeutics is working on a portfolio of cancer therapies, targeting the most aggressive and resistant forms of the disease. The company hopes to develop treatments precisely tailored to an individual patient’s tumour.

Carrick currently has three candidates in its pipeline, one of which is based on research conducted by Steve Jackson, professor of biology at Cambridge University and head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories. The company has not revealed details about the two remaining programs.

Carrick expects to significantly expand its pipeline through collaborations with Cancer Research UK, Cambridge University, Imperial College London and Oxford University.

Steven Gillis, managing partner at Arch Ventures Partners, and Paul Thurk, managing director for Europe at Arch, will join the board of directors.

Gillis said: “The quality of the science and assets, combined with the calibre of the management team makes Carrick Therapeutics a powerful proposition. As an investor and a scientist I look forward to Carrick Therapeutics being a dominant force in the fight against cancer.”

Thurk said: “Carrick’s world-class team and pioneering work share many of the same extraordinary attributes of other successful oncology companies we’ve helped build.  

“Except, in this case, we did not start with a specific technology, which would be our norm.  We instead started with an exemplary team of industry veterans, investigating hundreds of assets, to find the remarkable mix that now makes up Carrick.”