Another company has rolled down Flagship Pioneering’s conveyor belt: Cygnal Therapeutics, which hopes to stop the harmful communication between nerves and cancer or immune cells.
Cygnal, which has around 40 employees working out of its Vassar Street office, and hopes to reach 58 employees within the next year, has raised $65 million to develop its two lead drug candidates. CEO Pearl Huang didn’t say which form of cancer or inflammatory diseases the Cambridge-based company is focusing on initially, as well as what stage of financing they’re in.
“My philosophy on private equity is we’re always raising it. We are always interested in talking to like-minded investors,” she said. Huang didn’t say if the company’s valuation would be affected by its decision not to raise standard Series A, B or C rounds.
The two-year-old startup is one of the first organizations to begin developing treatments using nerves that spread throughout the body outside of the brain and spine, referred to as “exoneural biology.”
