DNA damage repair defects are common in cancer cells, and studying the mechanisms of DNA damage repair facilitates the development of novel cancer therapies.
SynRx Therapeutics (Chinese：圣域生物), an innovative drug developer, announced that it had completed a pre-Series A funding round worth more than CNY 100 million (USD 14.16 million) recently. This round of financing was invested by Lapam Capital (Chinese：龙磐投资), Fenghua Venture (Chinese：海邦沣华), Westlake Innovation Capital (Chinese：西湖创新投资), Long Yield Venture Capital (Chinese：礼医医药) and other investors.
The funds will be used to expand the company's R&D capabilities of innovative drug pipelines in DNA damage repair (DDR).
SynRx Therapeutics, an innovative R&D enterprise, has been focusing on the DNA damage repair arena, committed to developing novel anti-tumor drugs using synthetic lethality approaches since its establishment in 2021 in Hangzhou. The Shanghai branch of SynRx Therapeutics was established in May 2022 to facilitate communication with the frontier and better attract outstanding talent.
Synthetic lethality is when two non-lethal genes are inhibited simultaneously, causing cell death. Genetic pathways in normal cells are intact. Since there are at least one or more DNA damage repair defects in most cancer cells, making them highly dependent on the remaining pathway. Targeting DNA damage repair pathways and inhibiting cancer cells' residual pathways can cause synthetic lethality.
In 2022, SynRx Therapeutics achieved key breakthroughs in several critical R&D pipelines in the DDR field, and it is expected to facilitate the entry of representative projects into the IND stage in 2023.
Relevant enterprises include IMPACT Therapeutics (Chinese：英派药业), BeiGene(Chinese：百济神州) and Zai Lab (Chinese：再鼎医药).