On September 22, 2025 Fierce biotech reported that from advancing radically new therapies to refining existing modalities, this year’s Fierce 15 companies are pushing the envelope and giving us a reason for optimism (Press release, Alterome Therapeutics, SEP 22, 2025, View Source [SID1234656136]).
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This year has been chock-full of challenges, ranging from a seemingly never-ending biotech bear market to deep uncertainty surrounding regulatory and international policies. Yet, unmet need still fuels biotech, with companies risking it all in hopes of bringing new medicines to patients.
Welcome to this year’s best in biotech. These biotechs were carefully selected from hundreds of nominees and represent the most innovative and visionary companies leading the pack—even, or maybe especially, through unpredictable conditions.
This year, the Fierce 15 recognizes biotechs across continents and indications, including companies working to battle cancer, neurodegeneration, rare diseases, autoimmune conditions and more.
This is the crème de la crème working on both next-generation drugs and never-before-seen modalities. While the organizations differ across methods and therapeutic areas, there’s one main common thread: They’re all challenging old ways of working.
The 2025 class is defined by resilience, diversity in both strategy and leadership, and treatments that hold life-changing potential for underserved patients around the world.
Read on to meet the companies—and leaders—redefining biotech. We are pleased to present Fierce Biotech’s 2025 Fierce 15.
Alterome Therapeutics
Targeting the genetic alterations that cause cancer while sparing healthy cells
CEO: Jung Choi
Founded: 2021
Based: San Diego
Clinical focus: Breast and endometrial cancers, colorectal cancer, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, non-small cell lung cancer, solid tumors
What makes Alterome fierce: Alterome Therapeutics was founded with a mission to discover precision medicines that could potentially treat what CEO Jung Choi describes as "some of the scariest cancers out there," including cancers of the pancreas, colon and lungs.
As its name suggests, Alterome’s approach is centered on developing drugs that aim to attack the genetic mutations that cause cancer, while trying to minimize side effects to the body’s healthy cells.
The company’s work is driven by three main factors, Choi said in an interview with Fierce Biotech: "a very deep understanding of the cellular pathways that drive cancer," a fast-paced drug development approach rooted in advanced chemical structure and physics-based design—powered by its Kraken computational chemistry platform—and a team of "relentless" scientists at the core of it all.
"So, that’s how we’ve been able to go from idea to clinic in just three and a half years, with two potentially best-of-their-kind cancer medications," she said.
Those two candidates are now in phase 1 trials. The first is a KRAS selective inhibitor that Choi described as "the Goldilocks of KRAS," because it aims to bridge the gap between KRAS inhibitors that only target specific mutations and those that take aim at all forms of RAS, leading to unwanted toxicities.
Alterome’s take on the approach, then, is an attempt at "hitting KRAS very selectively, but also inhibiting nearly all, if not all, of the KRAS mutations potently and durably," she said, while also inhibiting KRAS whether active or inactive and boasting "very good druglike properties."
The company believes ALTA3263 is "the best KRAS inhibitor that hits all four characteristics," according to Choi. It’s being studied in colorectal, pancreatic and non-small cell lung cancers.
The other candidate, ALTA2618, is a covalent AKT1 E17K mutation-selective inhibitor that Alterome has developed to target only the mutant form of AKT that drives cancer, while leaving the benign form of the protein alone.
"What’s exciting to us is that, as far as we know, we are the first investigational therapy that’s in the clinic with this approach," Choi said, adding that ALTA2618 is being studied in patients with hormone-positive breast cancer as well as endometrial, ovarian and other AKT1-driven cancers.
Alterome is hoping to keep up the fast pace of development. The company plans first to generate monotherapy data for both candidates in the "not-too-distant future," per Choi, before "moving very quickly" into testing them as part of combination therapies, then taking those results to the FDA for the go-ahead to start registrational studies.
The company’s current and future plans are being helped along by VC funding that most recently included a series B round led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives and closed in the spring of 2024 with $132 million. Like any biotech startup, Choi said Alterome will "do more financing as time goes on," drawing in new backers based on "very meaningful clinical milestones."
Choi joined Alterome earlier this year, fresh off a stint as entrepreneur in residence at Third Rock Ventures and following various roles leading corporate development at Gilead Sciences, Chimerix, InterMune—until it was purchased by Roche in 2014—and Global Blood Therapeutics, through its own 2022 acquisition by Pfizer.