Ambagon Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that is developing cancer molecule therapeutics. The company has offices in San Carlos, California, and Eindhoven, the Netherlands. On Thursday, it announced that it has raised $85M (approx €75.1M) in its Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Nextech Invest. Ambagon’s existing investors RA Capital Management, Droia Ventures, Inkef Capital, AbbVie Ventures, MRL Ventures Fund, and Mission BioCapital also participated in the round along with new investor Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company).
The capital will be used to augment the company’s drug discovery platform and to advance its pipeline of molecular glues.
Adam Rosenberg, Ambagon’s Chair and RA Capital Venture Partner, says, “We are proud to continue to support Ambagon as it works to create drugs through targeted stabilisation of protein complexes. Since our seed investment, the team has developed an impressive proprietary dataset and systemic understanding of 14-3-3 interactions. Ambagon truly has the potential to change the narrative for disordered targets.”
About 14-3-3 Biology
Many disease-relevant proteins have regions of intrinsic disorder that cannot be targeted by conventional small molecule drugs. Several thousand proteins with such intrinsically disordered regions have been identified that interact with the hub protein 14-3-3. In binding to a disordered protein region, 14-3-3 induces order, conferring druggability.
By stabilising naturally occurring 14-3-3: client interactions, Ambagon aims to develop novel therapeutic candidates for difficult-to-drug proteins. Ambagon’s platform harnesses the biology of the regulatory hub protein 14-3-3, which reads serine/threonine phosphorylation.
With more than 3000 client proteins reported, 14-3-3 has a vast interactome, enabling the manipulation of a broad range of biology across indications. The pipeline currently focuses on oncology, where many opportunities exist to engage currently-undruggable targets.
To help patients live longer and healthier lives
Ambagon Therapeutics claims to be pioneering methods to unlock intrinsically disordered protein targets using small molecules. The company applies deep knowledge of 14-3-3 proteins and drug discovery tools to create molecular glues that stabilise 14-3-3:target complexes.
These molecular glue stabilisers amplify native biology to restore or inhibit target function, potentiate target activity, or promote or block target degradation.
Ambagon was founded in 2020 by Michelle Arkin, Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and co-Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center at UCSF; Lucas Brunsveld, Professor of Chemical Biology at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e); and Christian Ottmann, an Associate Professor of Molecular Cell and Structural Biology, TU/e.
Ambagon’s seasoned leadership team includes CEO Scott Clarke, previously CEO of Tizona Therapeutics and Trishula Therapeutics, and Chief Scientific Officer Nancy Pryer, previously CSO at Day One Biopharmaceuticals and Chief Development Officer at Nurix Therapeutics.
CEO Clarke says, “Our deep understanding of 14-3-3 biology has broad applications for drug discovery as it opens up disordered protein regions as therapeutic targets. Combined with our proprietary structural insights, curated chemical library, and bespoke drug discovery tools, our experienced drug development team is well placed to bring forward new medicines addressing previously undruggable targets.”
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