News

Lewis Cantley, Ph.D., and Gina DeNicola, Ph.D. Thirty years ago, Lewis Cantley discovered what we now know as one of the hottest molecular targets in cancer biology. The PI3-kinase pathway can be thought of like a busy railroad crossing for cancer cell growth and proliferation. Drug developers have poured tremendous resources into creating drugs aimed at this target, with some success.

Now Cantley, a scientist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, has some new ideas about molecular targets for cancer and metabolic diseases. He has a prominent collaborator, Nathanael Gray of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute , skilled in developing chemical compounds. Cantley, after his important early discovery, moved on to co-found another promising cancer drug developer–Cambridge, Mass.-based Agios Pharmaceuticals.

Together, those factors were enough to persuade four major drug companies to join a venture capital group betting $48 million on another Cantley-inspired startup.

Petra Pharma is being backed by Accelerator Corp., a venture-capital incubator founded in Seattle in 2003. Accelerator has spent the last couple years mapping out an expansion plan in New York, and Petra represents the first Accelerator company to emerge in the nation’s biggest city. Eli Lilly , Pfizer PFE -3.23% Venture Investments, Johnson & Johnson JNJ +0.00% Innovation and AbbVie ABBV +0.00% are all among the investors in the new company, along with Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Harris & Harris Group, Innovate NY Fund, The Partnership Fund for New York City, Watson Fund and WuXi PharmaTech.

The name Petra was inspired by an ancient city carved into sandstone cliffs of southern Jordan, at the crossroads of a well-trafficked trade route. While the company believes its targets are central players in important biological signaling pathways, these roads apparently aren’t yet well-trafficked by other drug companies. To avoid tipping off competitors, Petra isn’t saying anything public yet about which targets and routes it has in mind, but the company is crafting synthetic chemical compounds that inhibit what it describes as novel molecular targets in cell division, growth and signaling.

Greg Plowman, vice president of oncology research at Eli Lilly, said the concept of Petra, the track records of the co-founders and the potential to apply their combined insights in the nation’s most dense hub for early- and mid-stage clinical trials did the trick. “The opportunity for these guys (Cantley and Gray) to commit locally and grow a biopharma organization here is very exciting,” Plowman said.

...

This is an excerpt of an article that appeared in Forbes. Read the full story here. 

Other coverage: 

• Harris & Harris Group Portfolio Company, Accelerator Corporation, Launches Petra Pharma Corporation - CNN Money
• With $48M For Petra Pharma, Accelerator Places First NYC Bet - Xconomy.com
• Accelerator Corporation Launches First Startup in New York City Portfolio - BusinessWIre
• NYC startup Petra Pharmaceuticals launches with $48M - MedCity News
• Accelerator's $48M biotech project looks to spark the NYC startup scene - Fierce BioTech