Third Rock shrinks another biotech as Cedilla restructures, CEO and CBO depart

Biotech incubator and investor Third Rock Ventures has pruned another one of its offshoots by replacing the CEO, restructuring and looking for partners for lead assets.

Cedilla Therapeutics, launched in 2018 with $56 million from the VC firm, is “engaged in several strategic discussions related to its lead programs,” a Third Rock spokesperson told Endpoints News via email. Partner Neil Exter, a 16-year veteran of the investment shop, has replaced Alexandra Glucksmann as CEO.

Neil Exter

The Cambridge, MA, startup raised another $57.6 million in 2020 and $25 million more in 2021 to bankroll research and development of small molecules that conditionally inhibit TEAD, CDK2 and other undisclosed targets in oncology. IND-enabling studies were expected to happen last year.

But now the biotech appears to be a skeleton crew of its former self, with more than half of its workers out the door in recent months. CBO Véronique Riethuisen left in December, medicinal chemistry director Louise Kirman departed around the same time and at least two dozen other Cedilla employees have left since last summer, per LinkedIn data.

Third Rock did not reply to further inquiry. Exter didn’t reply to Endpoints’ inquiries as of publication time.

Cedilla marks at least the fourth Third Rock biotech to run into hurdles in recent months. Immunotherapy biotech Jounce Therapeutics said Thursday it’s shuffling hands with the UK’s Redx; Goldfinch Bio shuttered and sold assets to Karuna Therapeutics; autoimmune and inflammatory biotech Rheos Medicines closed shop and liver cell therapy maker Ambys Medicines did the same.

Alexandra Glucksmann

The startup’s funders include Casdin Capital, Boxer Capital, RA Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Woodline Partners, Eli Lilly, Schroder Adveq and others. Founders include professors from Harvard and UCSF.

At the time of Cedilla’s launch, Glucksmann said the biotech was attempting to take a different approach to the burgeoning protein degradation field.

“Instead of starting with a technology and then having to find a target — and being limited by the tech we have — we are instead starting with a target of interest and applying different methodologies to degrade it,” she told Endpoints at the time. She left Cedilla in November, per her LinkedIn profile.

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