Eikon debuts with $148 million and Perlmutter at the helm

Eikon Therapeutics has launched with $148 million to explore whether superresolution microscopy, a technique that allows researchers to watch individual proteins inside of living cells, can be used to invent drugs. In a vote of confidence for the biotech firm’s approach, Roger Perlmutter, former president of Merck Research Laboratories, has agreed to come aboard as CEO.

Drug developers have long relied on snapshots of proteins to design molecules to control them. More recently, some have shifted to creating movies of individual proteins, hoping that their twisting and folding will reveal new pockets for tucking in drugs.

But, in reality, proteins do their work in the complex environment of cells, where they mingle with many other molecules. The founders of Eikon—University of California, Berkeley’s Eric Betzig, Xavier Darzacq, Robert Tjian, and Janelia Research Center’s Luke Lavis—have spent the better part of a decade collaborating on tools and methods that allow researchers to tune into that action.

“The big mystery of biology for me is how you go from inanimate molecules to an animate cell,” says Betzig, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2014 for his work on superresolution microscopy. When he sees a simulation or movie of the process of transcription, he wonders what exactly causes a particular nucleotide to be hoovered up by the polymerase. “How the heck do molecules come together?”

The tools developed by the team allow that question to be answered, revealing new and sometimes surprising details of molecular interactions that might otherwise take years to uncover.

Now, Eikon will try to industrialize the approach. “There’s no doubt we’re going to learn new biology,” Tjian says. “But the real challenge here for Eikon is, okay that’s great, but how are you going to turn that into drugs?”

A team of Eikon scientists has been working since October 2019 to explore whether the academic exercise can be turned into an industrial one. Leon Chen, a partner at the Column Group, which led the financing, explains that the team had to confirm several things about the technology: if the platform could explore any protein, or only certain ones; if it could look at many cells at once, or only a handful; if the cell lines used to ask questions about protein behavior were scalable; and if all of the data coming out of their experiments could be processed quickly.

The platform Eikon landed on combines genetics and molecule biology expertise, optical tools, gene-editing techniques, machine learning, and chemistry expertise spanning from the fluorescent dyes used in microscopy to medicinal chemistry.

The next big step for Eikon was bringing in someone who could figure out the best way to deploy it. The founders were thrilled when Perlmutter, widely lauded for turning Merck & Co. into an immuno-oncology powerhouse, agreed to come on as CEO after retiring at the end of 2020.

“I’m sure he’s had dozens and dozens of incoming opportunities, and he can be the scientific chairman of any company,” says Brad Loncar, CEO of life sciences–focused Loncar Investments. “The fact that he’s chosen to be the CEO in this case I think really shows that it’s real. That’s a huge endorsement.