General Proximity

Super excited that Felicis led the seed funding in General Proximity and proud to partner with Armand Cognetta - one of the most resilient and inspiring founders I met. We feel like induced proximity / proximity therapeutics is going to be one of the technologies that propels us towards novel cures for cancer and many other diseases. This cutting-edge approach will enable solutions to some of the most ambitious and consequential challenges in drug discovery, spearheading a bold new era of human healthspan and longevity extension. More on their funding in Axios: https://lnkd.in/gwxbVzeE

In the first of my two exclusives for today, Drug discovery platform General Proximity raised an $8 million seed, CEO Armand Cognetta told me exclusively. The round was led by Aydin Senkut, founder of Felicis. Proximity therapeutics is an approach that takes an "undruggable" protein or enzyme and forces it in proximity with a drug target. This method shows promise in identifying drug candidates for difficult-to-treat conditions like dementia. See more details blow 👇

Armand Cognetta is an absolute beast of a founder!! A force of nature - super gritty, a workhorse, high EQ and IQ. Obsessed with what he has built at General Proximity. His platform is going to be extremely useful for aging with the ability to reprogram cellular transcription using a modality not limited by tissue delivery like current players in the space (mRNA, gene therapy, etc). One to watch closely and cheer on!

We are live! Read more below. https://lnkd.in/gBPACjrj

So honored to share that General Proximity was one of the 23 awardees (out of 1700+ applicants!) for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) #SprintForWomensHealth! This $3M grant will support our team as we advance next-gen proximity therapeutics for high value undruggable targets in the women’s cancer space towards the clinic. Dedicating this work to my incredible mother, Suzanne Cognetta. I began working on cancer therapeutics after she was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time and I realized that despite being in one of the best chemical biology labs in the world, I was powerless to help her. Hopefully our work here will be a big step towards changing that for all the women and mothers in the world.

A few things I've learned from running a co

we're hiring 😉

I'm hiring a principal scientist/director at General Proximity to take over my role of leading the absolutely stellar group of scientists on our platform team. Strong chem bio + proximity background is best, but leadership skills are most important. Please share + DM if interested, ty! :)