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Tasca Therapeutics aims to drug protein pockets

David Fisher, Milenko Cicmil, and Xu Wu stand together for an outdoor photo.

Credit: Tasca Therapeutics

From left: Tasca Therapeutics' scientific cofounder David Fisher, cofounder and CEO Milenko Cicmil, and cofounder and director Xu Wu.

Imagine, says Milenko Cicmil, a crunched-up piece of paper. The surface of the ball is riddled with creases, folds, and pockets. A protein is like a more complex version of that crunched paper ball with pockets that molecules can nestle inside.

“It’s really all about that pocket,” says Cicmil, who cofounded and now serves as CEO of a new biotech start-up called Tasca Therapeutics. “It’s all about knowledge of the pocket and understanding how to drug that pocket that will, in turn, increase the universe of proteins we are currently drugging.”

Cicmil is particularly interested in proteins with hydrophobic pockets—potential binding sites for new drugs—that undergo the process of autopalmitoylation, which determines where the protein goes and what it does.

Almost 10 years ago, when Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) chemist Xu Wu identified TEA domain (TEAD) transcription factors that go through that process, he also determined it would be possible to develop new small molecules that could bind to those sites, Cicmil says (Nat. Chem. Biol. 2016, DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.2036). But Wu waited until February 2021 to move forward with that idea.

Wu got together with Cicmil and MGH dermatologist David Fisher to form a start-up to commercialize his idea. The trio started what is now Tasca “literally in my basement during the pandemic time,” Cicmil says.

Tasca is Italian for “pocket,” a nod to the firm’s efforts to develop small molecules that are meant to go after unique, hydrophobic pockets on proteins involved in cancer and other diseases. Cicmil says the start-up has identified about 100 proteins that undergo autopalmitoylation at specific sites, and of those, three to five proteins that will serve as targets for cancer treatment.

Tasca will start by evaluating its lead drug candidate—a molecule called CP-383—in small-cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer, and glioblastoma. The latter indication is of particular interest, Cicmil says, because CP-383 can cross the blood-brain barrier—a challenge in treating the infamously aggressive brain cancer.

Tasca has raised $52 million across a seed and series A round. Cure Ventures co-led the series A with the venture arm of Regeneron. According to Cicmil, the start-up is leaving the series A open for at least a few more months in the hopes of raising another $8 million or more. Tasca currently stands at 3 full-time employees, with plans to grow to 25 next year and move into a new lab space in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in mid-January.

Aside from cancer, Tasca is exploring the possibility of developing compounds for neurodegenerative and metabolic conditions. Still, the focus is on cancer for now: “We are very much an oncology-driven company,” Cicmil says. “But there is significant opportunity outside of oncology here as well.”

Chemical & Engineering News

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