Thursday, December 1, 2011

H3 Biomedicine opens new headquarters, labs in Cambridge

By Lori Valigra, Mass High Tech correspondent

H3 Biomedicine Inc., a personalized cancer drug discovery company launched earlier this year,  is opening its new headquarters and 24,000 square feet of laboratory space in Cambridge this afternoon. The privately held company has $200 million in research funding from Japanese pharmaceutical maker Eisai.

Over the next year, the company plans to increase its staff to 70 and expand into more lab space.

H3 Biomedicine was established by scientific founders Stuart Schreiber and Todd Golub of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. The company is based on their understanding that the genetics of patients’ cancers can reveal drug targets tailored to their cancers. Advances in next-generation synthetic chemistry are expected to result in the discovery of new classes of drugs against these targets. 

Eisai will also provide additional support for the H3 clinical development programs, including access to its drug development capabilities.

“H3 Biomedicine provides an innovative, intensely collaborative business model ideally suited to the intellectual, operational, and fiscal demands of genomics-driven, patient-based drug discovery,” Haruo Naito, president and CEO of Eisai Co. Ltd., said in a statement. “The unique collaboration we have established represents a discovery model of the future and is well aligned with our global commitment to help satisfy unmet medical needs.”