A new cancer treatment R&D operation is starting up in Cambridge, MA, based on the work of Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT founding members Stuart Schreiber and Todd Golub. H3 Biomedicine announced it has launched to develop treatments tailored to patients’ cancers, as part of a partnership with the U.S. unit of the Japanese pharmaceutical firm Eisai.
H3 will get up to $200 million in research funding from Eisai, access to its drug development resources, and support for the clinical development of its drug programs, according to the announcement. The new R&D house says it will focus on the genetics of patients’ cancers and will use cutting-edge chemistry to discover safe and effective drugs against the targets revealed by such genetic analysis.
Schreiber’s work has already resulted in three approved drugs that target cancer proteins he discovered. Golub, a leader in the genomic approach to cancer drug discovery, serves as an investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Both researchers are among the founders of Cambridge-based Forma Therapeutics, which launched in 2007 to develop drugs based on new knowledge about the genetics of cancer. In November Forma nabbed a $20 million deal with Eisai, one of a number of deals Forma has inked with pharma companies since its launch.
