Molineaux turns her attention to start-up Calithera

Susan Molineaux (photo) helped guide cancer drug developer Proteolix from early stage multiple myeloma research through Phase II trials. The developer was snapped up by Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which last year paid $276 million up front for the company, leaving Molineaux free to concentrate on a new project. "I'm a risk taker," Molineaux tells the San Francisco Business Times. "There's probably no super-safe program I've ever been associated with." The entrepreneur has now...

Calithera banks $40M; Google Ventures leads $22M iPierian round

South San Francisco-based startup Calithera Biosciences has banked a whopping $40 million Series A round to ramp up development work on a new group of cancer drugs discovered in the lab of James Wells, chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the University of California, San Francisco School of Pharmacy. Wells' compounds activate procaspases and trigger apoptosis (cell death) in cancer cells. "Most drug discovery efforts are focused on identifying drugs that inhibit enzyme...