TippingPoint Biosciences Raises $4.5M Seed to Drug Hidden Epigenetic Targets in Deadly Pediatric Brain Cancer

Emerging biotechnology company aims to unlock targeting of disease-specific epigenetic protein interfaces to develop next-generation therapies for pediatric cancers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TippingPoint Biosciences today announced the closing of an oversubscribed $4.5 million seed financing to advance a breakthrough drug discovery platform that targets epigenetic protein interfaces long considered “undruggable,” opening a new frontier in precision medicine. The financing was led by SOSV and LKS Fund, with participation from a syndicate of leading investors including Sazze Partners, Freeflow Ventures, StoryHouse Ventures, Sontag Innovation Fund, American Cancer Society BrightEdge, XEIA and WeCAN.

The company was co-founded by Laura Hsieh, PhD, and renowned chromatin biologist Geeta Narlikar, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Hsieh developed the underlying technology during her postdoctoral research in Narlikar’s laboratory, which is widely recognized for tackling some of the most challenging mechanistic problems in chromatin biology and genome regulation.

Despite billions of dollars invested over the past decade in therapies targeting epigenetic enzymes, many programs have struggled in the clinic because drugs that bind catalytic pockets often disrupt essential functions shared by healthy and diseased cells – highlighting a critical unmet need. TippingPoint is pioneering a fundamentally different strategy: recreating disease-specific chromatin environments to reveal transient protein–protein interfaces that are unique to pathological states, unlocking highly selective and previously inaccessible targets within the epigenome.

“Many of the most important interactions driving epigenetic disease only exist under very specific biological conditions,” said Hsieh, co-founder and CEO of TippingPoint Biosciences. “Our technologies precisely recreate those conditions, exposing actionable targets that are currently invisible to traditional drug discovery efforts.”

TippingPoint plans to develop and de-risk its epigenetic interface platform by first focusing on an aggressive pediatric brainstem tumor called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). The disease is one of the deadliest childhood cancers and is driven by profound disruptions of chromatin biology, making it a compelling target for the company’s approach.

TippingPoint previously raised $2.5 million in pre-seed financing, including non-dilutive grants, to bring together several foundations and impact investors committed to accelerating therapies for pediatric brain cancer, including Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation (PBTF) and Yuvaan Tiwari Foundation. The company also received multiple competitive Golden Ticket awards from MBC BioLabs, AbbVie, Astellas and ONO Pharmaceuticals.

The seed financing will support advancement of TippingPoint’s lead program toward proof-of-concept studies in orthotopic DIPG models while expanding the company’s epigenetic interface discovery platform. The company hopes to unlock broader classes of previously inaccessible targets across cancer and other diseases driven by chromatin dysfunction.

About TippingPoint Biosciences
TippingPoint Biosciences is an early-stage therapeutic company, spun out of Dr. Geeta Narlikar’s lab at UCSF, with a novel drug discovery platform designed to identify first-in-class drugs aimed at treating diseases related to dysfunctional DNA packaging (chromatin). TippingPoint Bio is the first to develop a screening platform to enable direct targeting of the defective chromatin in disease cells without affecting healthy cells. The platform can be applied to multiple disease areas like cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and developmental disorders. For more information, please visit www.tippingpointbiosciences.com.