Red Queen Therapeutics, a Cambridge, MA-based clinical-stage biotechnology company, raised USD55M in Series A funding.
Apple Tree Partners made the investment.
The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts.
Co-founded by Apple Tree Partners (ATP) and biomedical researcher Loren Walensky, M.D., Ph.D., and led by Mark Mitchnick, M.D., Chief Executive Officer, and Paul Da Silva Jardine, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Red Queen Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that is applying its proprietary stapled lipopeptide technology to develop and deliver new treatments for a broad range of viruses, including coronaviruses, influenzas, and other enveloped viruses. Red Queen applies its novel stapled lipopeptide platform technology to rapidly design and develop new antiviral therapies. The platform’s specific mechanism of fusion inhibition represents a new mode of early intervention that offers the following important advantages over available antiviral therapies or vaccines:
- The fusion-inhibiting mechanism acts on the virus itself and is not dependent on a well-functioning host immune system.
- Inhibiting viral fusion blocks viral entry, thus preventing or slowing host-cell infection and accelerating viral clearance.
- A single fusion-inhibiting lipopeptide agent can work against multiple variants and even across viruses within a family.
Its platform mechanism of action, fusion inhibition, is a mode of early intervention that can prevent or mitigate viral infection, enabling accelerated viral clearance and avoidance of severe disease. Its stapled lipopeptide therapeutics are also designed to be shelf-stable at room temperature and can be formulated and delivered in multiple ways, including topically by nasal spray or inhaler, or systematically by injection.
The company also had contract with BARDA for preclinical development of a pan-influenza therapeutic.
