Aileron Therapeutics pulls in $7M for peptide therapies
Aileron Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass., developer of peptide-based drugs for cancer, raised $7 million in a second funding round. The company is at work on a new class of “stapled” peptides, or protein fragments, that it says can penetrate cell walls.
Proteins and peptides make attractive drug candidates because they can interact with other proteins in the body in ways that traditional small-molecule drugs cannot. Most proteins and peptides, however, are too large to enter cells, which limits their usefulness as drugs to interactions with cell-surface proteins. The ability to put peptides inside cells could open up entirely new avenues for drug development.
The round included Apple Tree Partners and the Novartis Venture Fund. With the new investment, Aileron has raised a total of $10.5 million, according to VentureWire (subscription required).
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About the Author, David P. Hamilton
David Hamilton has been writing for VentureBeat LifeScience since April 2007. He formerly spent 14 years as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in its San Francisco and Tokyo bureaus. Prior to that, he spent several years as a reporter at Science Magazine and as a reporter/researcher for the New Republic, both in Washington.