Biotech start-up wins Google’s attention–and money

Last week, iPierian snared one of the most intriguing new investors on the biotech scene when it announced that Google Ventures was taking the lead on a $22 million Series B. The biotech had already gained Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a backer--a venture capital outfit with a big appetite for new technology that promises to shake up entire industries. And iPierian, which was formed with the vow of changing the way drugs are discovered and tested, fits that bill perfectly. The South...

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...