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With latest startup, repeat biotech founder Craig Crews tries to ‘hold and kill’ tumors
Dive Brief:
Halda Therapeutics, a Connecticut-based biotechnology startup co-founded by Yale University cancer researcher and serial entrepreneur Craig Crews, emerged from stealth Tuesday with plans to develop medicines it claims can kill tumors in an unusual way.
Dubbed “RIPTAC” therapeutics, the startup’s experimental medicines are a twist on a kind of cancer drug that co-opts the cell’s internal machinery to destroy troublesome proteins. Halda says its drug candidates are designed to hold two proteins together to cause killing of the cancer cell, an approach that could address some limitations of targeted cancer treatments.
Halda is backed with $76 million from investors, including Canaan Partners and Access Biotechnology, and has two medicines in early development for solid tumors. Though the company doesn’t yet have a CEO appointed, Kat Kayser-Bricker, a longtime R&D executive with Forma Therapeutics, is its chief scientist.
Source: BioPharma Dive