Effector Raises $38.6M to Advance New Class of Anti-Cancer Drugs

Effector Therapeutics lab (photo used with permission)

San Diego’s Effector Therapeutics, a five-year-old cancer drug developer, has raised $38.6 million in new venture capital funding. The Series C financing, led by Pfizer Venture Investments, brings total funding for Effector to about $150 million, CEO Steve Worland said late Monday.

The company said it plans to use the new funding to advance testing of small-molecule drugs that target a select set of proteins that regulate an anti-tumor immune response at a fundamental level of gene expression known as translation. There are multiple ways that these drugs, known as selective translation regulators, can intervene in this process, Worland said.

Effector’s lead drug candidate, eFT508, targets two related signaling proteins that dampen an anti-tumor immune response. By blocking these specific proteins, however, Effector expects to unleash the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. By acting in multiple ways to activate the immune system, Effector says its selective translation regulators represent a new approach in the hot field of cancer treatments known as immunotherapies.

Effector has embarked on a broad program for eFT508 that includes combining the drug with avelumab (Bavencio) in a study of colorectal cancer with Pfizer (NYSE: [[ticker:PFE]]) and Germany-based Merck KGaA. The company also has been testing eFT508 in early stage clinical trials targeting multiple solid tumors and lymphoma. With the additional funding, Effector plans to move into Phase 2 clinical trials over the next year or so, Worland said.

Proceeds of the funding round also will enable Effector to advance another drug immunotherapy candidate, eFT226, into the clinic next year. The company, founded on research from UC  San Francisco scientists Kevan Shokat and Davide Ruggero, now has about 40 employees, Worland said.

Other new investors, including Alexandria Venture Investments, joined Pfizer Venture Investments in the round. All existing investors also participated, including U.S. Venture Partners, Abingworth, Novartis Venture Fund, SR One, The Column Group, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Sectoral Asset Management, AbbVie Biotech Ventures, BioMed Ventures, and Astellas Ventures.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.