Oncology firm OnKure raises $55M

BOULDER — OnKure Inc., a Boulder-based developer of cancer treatments, has raised $55 million in its Series B round.

In a statement, the company said the investment will be used to advance its current pipeline of early-stage and pre-clinical oncology treatments.

The latest round dwarfs OnKure’s prior Series A-1 investment, which amounted to $3.26 million.

As part of their firm’s investments, Acorn Bioventures partner Issac Manke and Cormorant Asset Management managing director Andrew Phillips will join OnKure’s board. That brings the company’s board size from four to six.

“I am grateful for the financial and strategic support from our new investors that will allow OnKure to accelerate the discovery and development of a robust pipeline focused on epigenetic regulation, delaying resistance and synthetic lethality,” OnKure CEO Tony Piscopio said in a statement.

Piscopio was previously a co-founder with Array BioPharma Inc., a Boulder oncology company that was acquired in 2019 by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) for $11 billion.

OnKure’s clinical focus is on histone deacetylase inhibitors, a class of molecules thought to stop the growth of cells in solid cancer tumors. It expects to close a Phase I trial at the University of Colorado Anschutz in April, according to the federal clinical trial database and has two other drug candidates in pre-clinical trial development.

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