Accent Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company developing breakthrough treatments for cancer patients, today announced $40 million in Series A capital to establish a discovery platform and pipeline of therapeutic candidates targeting RNA-modifying proteins (RMPs), a novel target space for precision cancer therapies. The Column Group, Atlas Venture and EcoR1 Capital provided the investment.

Accent Therapeutics was established to create innovative therapeutics in the rapidly advancing area of epitranscriptomics - the role of RNA structure, stability, function and translation in cell biology. Recent studies have linked certain human cancers to the activity of particular RMPs, providing a rich new target space for drug development. The Accent Therapeutics team includes seasoned drug developers, with an established record of translating novel science into innovative therapies. Leaders of that team have recently published a peer-reviewed overview of advances in the field in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery entitled “RNA-Modifying Proteins as Anticancer Drug Targets” (doi:10.1038/nrd.2018.71).

Accent’s founders include Howard Y. Chang, M.D., Ph.D. of Stanford University, Chuan He, Ph.D. of the University of Chicago and Robert A. Copeland, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer of Accent Therapeutics, who together bring broad and deep expertise in the emerging biology of epitranscriptomics, its role in human diseases and the translation of novel science to cancer drug discovery and development. “Epitranscriptomics opens a rich new target space, including RMPs that are associated with specific cancers, many with poor patient prognoses,” said Dr. Copeland. “We plan to treat patients by precisely targeting cancers that are uniquely dependent on these specific RMPs.”