BRIEF—UK spinout company Monte Rosa raises $96 million in Series B financing

Monte Rosa Therapeutics, a company originally formed as a spinout from Cancer Research UK-funded drug discovery research at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, in collaboration with Versant Ventures’ drug discovery engine Ridgeline Therapeutics, has closed a $96 million Series B financing from investors to support the further development of its drug pipeline.

The $96 million in funding is in addition to an initial $32.5 millio000 of funding announced when Monte Rosa Therapeutics launched publicly earlier this year.

The company was formed in 2018 by Versant Ventures, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and Cancer Research UK from Cancer Research UK-funded science at the ICR, with the involvement of the ICR’s Head of Chemistry Professor Ian Collins and Professor Raj Chopra, formerly the ICR’s Head of Cancer Therapeutics.

Monte Rosa Therapeutics’ new funding will enable it to accelerate the development of its pipeline, advance drug candidates into clinical studies, and bolster its platform capability to rationally design and develop precision medicines for genomically defined diseases intractable to standard of care.