Dual Therapeutics, a spin-out from University Hospitals of Cleveland, is raising $7.5m. According to an amended Form D filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has secured $3,689,611, with $3,810,389 still remaining.
The company, which is developing therapeutics for prostate cancer, lung cancer and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, is based at Harlem Biospace in New York City, a life science incubator opened last year.
Dual’s technology is based on cancer research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. It was launched by the BioMotiv accelerator, affiliated with the Harrington Project for Discovery and Development. The Harrington Project is a $250m national initiative to support the discovery and development of therapeutic breakthroughs.
The company’s technology is able to trigger the death of certain tumour cells. Two tumour suppressor genes, called KLF6 and FOXO1, are turned off as cancer spreads through the body. Dual Therapeutics uses small molecules to modulate those two key tumour suppressors, and has successfully demonstrated in vivo anti-tumour activity in multiple cancer models.
Led by Michael Ohlmeyer, an associate professor of structural and chemical biology at Mount Sinai, the research team previously received funding from Partnership for New York City in 2012, which paid for early-stage drug development before being spun-out. The company is expected to apply for Investigational New Drug with the US Food and Drug Administration in early 2015.
