On February 11, 2020 Pinpoint Therapeutics, Inc. ("Pinpoint"), a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel autophagy inhibitors to treat cancer, reported that it has raised $1 million in debt financing led by Kairos Ventures of Beverly Hills, California (Press release, Pinpoint Therapeutics, FEB 11, 2020, View Source [SID1234554193]).
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Pinpoint was founded by researchers Ravi K. Amaravadi, M.D., and Jeffrey D. Winkler, Ph.D., from the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center and the Department of Chemistry, to develop new autophagy inhibitors for cancer treatments. Autophagy is a well-established mechanism of cancer cell survival and drug resistance. Pinpoint’s novel compounds target a recently discovered enzyme in the autophagy pathway called PPT1, which is highly expressed across most cancers. These inhibitors could be applied to a broad range of cancers alone or in combination with other treatments to overcome therapy resistance. Pinpoint will develop first-in-class autophagy inhibitors into clinical drugs for testing in a range of treatment-refractory cancers.
"This initial round of financing will allow us to develop a new approach to drugging autophagy, which until now seemed difficult to target in cancer. The activity of PPT1 inhibitors in cancer models has not been seen before in the autophagy space," said Christian Peters, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Pinpoint.
"Pinpoint has developed best-in-class compounds with unprecedented therapeutic potential and we are thrilled to support their efforts as they develop these novel drug-candidates for treatment of colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, and other major unmet needs in oncology," said Jim Demetriades, founder and Managing Partner of Kairos Ventures.