$20M Series A For Karyopharm to Fight Cancer

Karyopharm Therapeutics, a Newton, MA-based biotech focused on nuclear transport technology for applications in the treatment of cancer, autoimmune disease, and HIV, announced today that it has wrapped up a $20 million Series A financing from an an undisclosed group of investors.The startup is developing selective inhibitors of nuclear export (SINEs) designed to flag major tumor suppressor and growth regulatory proteins to kill cancer cells while sparing healthy cells.

Karyopharm was founded in 2009 by scientists linked to organizations such as Copenhagen University Hospital, Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and Epix Pharmaceuticals, a Lexington, MA-based drug developer that shut down in 2009. Karyopharm’s chief scientific officer and acting president is Sharon Shacham, who was senior vice president of drug development at Epix and oversaw the company’s work in the areas of inflammatory conditions, cardiovascular disease, and central nervous system disorders. Karyopharm said it will use the new funding, which follows about $1 million in angel investments, to select a cancer-targeting molecule as a candidate for a clinical trial.

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.