Crane and Sasisekharan Make It a Trifecta

I had Tempo Pharmaceticals CEO (and Polaris Ventures partner) Alan Crane on a panel this past Wednesday night at one of the occasional Convergence Forum dinners at the Harvard Faculty Club.

Earlier in the week, Ryan McBride of Mass HIgh Tech had noted that Crane was involved in a new start-up called Parasol Therapeutics. This is the third company that Crane, MIT prof Ram Sasisekharan, and Polaris have started (#1 was Momenta Pharmaceuticals, now public; #2 was Tempo.)

Crane just smiled when I asked him about Parasol, which also involves Polaris principal Kevin Bitterman. He said the company is still very much in stealth mode, and that he's just serving as a director -- no plans to leave Tempo and serve as Parasol's CEO.

Stem Cell Start-Up Fate Gets $12 Million

Fate Therapeutics hopes to use stem cells to fix damaged tissue; the start-up just received $12 million in A round funding from ARCH Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, Venrock, and OVP Venture Partners. The company's scientific founders hail from the University of Washington, Harvard, Stanford, and the Scripps Research Institute.

Fate says it'll have offices in both Massachusetts and Washington (the company was incubated in the Seattle offices of ARCH), but until a CEO is hired, they won't have a decision about where the HQ will be.

From the Seattle Times coverage:

In Seattle "we're able to attract money to great ideas," [ARCH founding partner Robert] Nelsen said. "The hardest thing is finding the right team and the right CEOs."

Fate will work on drugs that cause dormant adult stem cells to rebuild damaged tissue, as well as drugs that reprogram mature adult cells into stem cells that can repair ailing organs.

The therapies could help treat Down syndrome, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, as well as repair tissue after heart attacks, infections or transplants. Stem cells could also help fight certain types of cancer.

Mass High Tech adds:

The firm aims to develop chemical-based, or small molecule, drugs intended to "awaken" stem cells in the body to combat diseases and regenerate tissue. Its other molecules would reprogram adult cells to an embryonic state. None of the firm's treatments would be derived from embryonic stem cells, the company says.

Other local notables involved in Fate Therapeutics include Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Robert Langer and Ram Sasisekharan, both of whom serve on the firm's scientific advisory board.