HAYWARD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eikon Therapeutics, Inc., a pioneer in live-cell super-resolution microscopy and engineering for drug discovery, today announced that it has closed a $148 million Series A financing led by The Column Group with participation from Foresite Capital, Innovation Endeavors and Lux Capital. The company also announced the appointment of Roger M. Perlmutter, MD, PhD, as its new Chief Executive Officer.
Eikon’s drug discovery platform evolved from super-resolution microscopy, a ground-breaking approach to elucidating the behavior of proteins in live cells. Super-resolution microscopy was first developed by Eric Betzig, PhD, and collaborators, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014 for this work. Dr. Betzig, Xavier Darzacq, PhD, Luke Lavis, PhD, and Robert Tjian, PhD founded Eikon to industrialize this novel technology and to apply the tracking of protein dynamics to key applications across the drug discovery process.
Dr. Darzacq, who in addition to serving as a co-founder of Eikon, is a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “Eikon was founded on the vision that observing protein movement in living cells will yield important biological insights enabling the discovery of therapies that could not be identified by other means. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines engineering and science, we have created an exciting new window into cell biology and pharmacology. With the addition of Roger’s depth of drug development experience, the Eikon team is poised to apply this unique platform to its best advantage in developing therapeutics with potentially significant benefits to patients.”
Prior to joining Eikon, Dr. Perlmutter was an executive vice president at Merck and president of Merck Research Laboratories. Under his R&D leadership, Merck received more than 100 regulatory approvals for its medicines and vaccines globally, including those for multiple cancers, diabetes, and infectious diseases. Notably, Dr. Perlmutter helped Merck establish KEYTRUDA as a foundational immunotherapy for cancer care. Prior to joining Merck, he was executive vice president and head of R&D at Amgen for more than a decade. Earlier in his career, Dr. Perlmutter was a Professor in the Departments of Immunology, Biochemistry and Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, and served as Chairman of its Department of Immunology, where he was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Perlmutter received his MD and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis and his BA from Reed College. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“The pharmaceutical industry has long been limited in the tools available to study dynamic regulatory mechanisms in living cells,” said Dr. Perlmutter. “In this context, it is inspiring to see what Eikon has already accomplished by incorporating physics and engineering along with machine learning to complement traditional drug discovery approaches. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to work with Drs. Betzig and Tjian, whom I have known for many years, and with the engineers, computer scientists, chemists and biologists at Eikon, with whom I have interacted during the past year, to identify and develop important new therapeutics.”
Dr. Perlmutter and the Eikon team will benefit from the expertise and insights of a distinguished, interdisciplinary Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), including:
- Eric Betzig, PhD, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and co-founder of Eikon Therapeutics
- Tom Cech, PhD, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, and former President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Juan Jaen, PhD, President, and co-founder of Arcus Biosciences
- Larry Lasky, PhD, Partner at The Column Group
- Fei-Fei Li, PhD, the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
- Eric Schmidt, PhD, former CEO and Executive Chairman of Google and Founding Partner of Innovation Endeavors
- Robert Tjian, PhD, former President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and co-founder of Eikon Therapeutics
“Quantifying real-time protein dynamics in cells and translating these insights into drug discovery requires a unique collaboration of world-class chemists, physicists, biologists and engineers working in concert. Under the leadership of Eikon CSO Dan Anderson; Senior Vice President of Engineering Russ Berman; and Xavier Darzacq, who served as interim CTO during the company’s first year, we have built a talented team that is successfully accomplishing this vision by bridging robotics and automation with drug discovery and high-performance computing,” said Leon Chen, PhD, Partner, The Column Group and Interim President at Eikon. “Roger shares this passion for integrative science and building high-performing R&D organizations where diverse skill sets are honored and encouraged. On behalf of the entire team, we look forward to working with him to continue building an organization of interdisciplinary experts who share our commitment to developing new therapies for severe unmet health needs.”
About Eikon Therapeutics
Eikon Therapeutics is a drug discovery and development company. Our proprietary platform leverages super-resolution microscopy, a Nobel Prize-winning technology, as well as the latest advances in biology, chemistry, engineering, and automation toward the goal of developing and bringing to market novel therapies. Eikon tracks and measures the real-time movement of individual proteins in living cells to increase our understanding of disease biology and discover differentiated therapeutics. Our multidisciplinary team aims to uncover and introduce new treatments for people with unmet health needs. Eikon is based in Hayward, Calif. Eikon can be found online via our website or on Twitter or LinkedIn.
