Initial Therapeutics

About Initial Therapeutics

Initial Therapeutics operates in the biotechnology sector, focusing on the discovery and development of small-molecule medicines to treat cancers and other serious illnesses. The company was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in South San Francisco, California. Venture capital firm Apple Tree Partners (ATP) created and launched the company with a $75 million Series A investment in May 2023.

The company was co-founded by a team of distinguished academic researchers: Jamie H.D. Cate, Ph.D., a professor at UC Berkeley with expertise in structural biology; Brian Paegel, Ph.D., a professor at UC Irvine specializing in microfluidics technology; and Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., a professor at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. Spiros Liras, Ph.D., a venture partner at ATP, was the founding CEO. This collaboration emerged from conversations about their intersecting research in protein synthesis kinetics, ribosome profiling, and rapid chemistry. In April 2024, Peter DiLaura, a seasoned executive with experience at companies like Sonoma Biotherapeutics and Second Genome, was appointed President and CEO to guide the company's progression.

Initial Therapeutics is pioneering a novel therapeutic approach called Selective Termination of Protein Synthesis (STOPS). This platform aims to develop medicines that block the formation of pathogenic proteins at their earliest stage, inside the ribosome's exit tunnel, before they are fully formed. The core of this technology is to recognize the linear sequence of a protein as it is being synthesized, rather than needing to find a binding pocket on the fully formed, three-dimensional protein. This strategy potentially expands the universe of "druggable" targets, allowing the company to pursue well-validated but notoriously difficult-to-drug proteins implicated in diseases. The business model centers on leveraging its proprietary STOPS platform to build a pipeline of small-molecule drugs, addressing unmet needs in areas like oncology and neurodegeneration.

The STOPS platform integrates the groundbreaking structural biology work from Dr. Cate's lab with the miniaturized microfluidics and ultra-large library screening technology from Dr. Paegel's lab. This allows for the selective modulation of protein translation for specific targets. A key benefit of this approach is that it bypasses the need for detailed structural information of the mature protein, which is a significant hurdle for conventional drug discovery. By preventing protein formation from the start, this method may also avert the creation of protein aggregates and other molecular pathologies that are hard to reverse, potentially offering therapeutic benefits by intervening earlier in the disease process.