to Advance First-in-Class Allosteric Drug Discovery Platform to the Clinic
Financing will accelerate HotSpot's transition into a clinical development company while enabling expansion of itrs product pipeline
Boston, Mass., Nov 30, 2021 - LSP, one of the leading life sciences and health care investors, today announced its investment in HotSpot Therapeutics, a private pharmaceutical company pioneering first-in-class allosteric therapies for oncology and immunology patients targeting regulatory sites on proteins referred to as “natural hotspots”. The funding is part of the $100 million Series C financing led by Pivotal bioventures with participation of B capital, Monashee Investment Management, CaaS Capital Management, Revelation Partners and Pavilion Capital and inside investors. In conjunction with this financing, Fouad Azzam, PhD, General Partner at LSP will join the HotSpot Board of Directors. LSP is investing from its LSP 7 fund.
The new financing will be used to continue advancing HotSpot’s Smart AllosteryTM platform focused on undrugged and poorly druggable targets, and the company’s existing pipeline. “With the support of top-tier healthcare and technology investors, we can expand on the significant productivity of the Smart Allostery™ platform to enable a treasure trove of sought after targets and thereby develop medicines that benefit patients,” said Jonathan Montagu, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of HotSpot Therapeutics. “We have diligently established a deep pipeline of product opportunities in cancer and autoimmune disease, each offering a clear path to clinical value through precision and patient-targeted trial design.”
HotSpot’s Smart Allostery™ platform unlocks a vast range of disease-relevant proteins for the first time through the identification of protein pockets called “natural hotspots.” Natural hotspots are pockets that are decisive in protein function yet previously unexploited using conventional allostery approaches. The Smart Allostery™ platform encompasses a broad suite of AI-enabled technologies and the industry’s largest and most diverse chemical library tailored to hotspots.
Earlier this month, HotSpot announced new data validating its Smart Allostery™ platform in the elucidation and preclinical evaluation of a novel allosteric inhibitor of the E3 ubiquitin ligase CBL-B, an important target in cancer immunotherapy. The data show that HotSpot can successfully target CBL-B with the first and only selective small molecule inhibitors. Identified via its Smart Allostery™ platform, these small molecules promote T cell responses in vitro and in mice. Through allosteric inhibition of this negative regulator of immune cells, HotSpot’s small molecule CBL-B inhibitors offer the potential for increased immunotherapy efficacy for cancer patient populations that have historically exhibited poor treatment responses.
For more information please contact:
Fouad Azzam, General Manager at LSP
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