Third Rock contributed to a $100m series C round for UIC's cancer drug developer Revolution that brought its total to $226m.
Revolution Medicines, a US-based cancer drug developer founded by biotech company builder Third Rock Ventures to exploit University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign research, yesterday closed a $100m series C round.
The round was led by investment firm Tavistock Group’s Boxer Capital unit, and featured Third Rock Ventures, Deerfield Management, Cormorant Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Vivo Capital and Biotechnology Value Fund.
Nextech Invest, Schroder Adveq, Column Group and Casdin Capital also took part in the transaction.
Founded in 2014, Revolution Medicines is working on small molecule drugs for a variety of cancers which target disease-causing mutations within a family of proteins called RAS.
The company’s lead candidate, RMC-4630, is currently in clinical development under a commercial alliance with drug developer Sanofi. It focuses on inhibiting a cell growth-modulating protein, SHP2, with the aim of treating multiple tumour types.
The series C capital will aid continued development of Revolution’s product pipeline, which also includes KRASG12C(GTP), a second-generation RAS inhibitor undergoing lead optimisation with the potential to treat lung, colorectal, endometrial and pancreatic cancers.
Revolution Medicines acquired Third Rock Ventures-founded biotech developer Warp Drive Bio in October 2018, and has integrated Warp’s oncology assets while disposing of the latter’s genomic mining portfolio.
Third Rock Ventures joined Column Group to provide a $25m series A extension into Revolution in 2016, adding to $45m it had supplied the previous year and bringing the round to a $70m close.
Revolution subsequently raised $56m in 2018 in a series B round led by Nextech Invest which featured Casdin Capital, Schroder Adveq, Third Rock, Column Group and unnamed additional institutional investors.
Revolution Medicines was co-founded by Martin Burke, a professor of chemistry at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, together with Michael Fischbach from Stanford University and Kevan Shokat from University of California, Berkeley.
