Many disease-relevant proteins have regions of intrinsic disorder that cannot be targeted by conventional small molecule drugs. Several thousand proteins with such intrinsically disordered regions have been identified that interact with the hub protein 14-3-3. In binding to a disordered protein region, 14-3-3 induces order, conferring drugability.

The company's pipeline currently focuses on oncology, where many opportunities exist to engage currently undrugable targets. Ambagon was founded by world leaders in 14-3-3 biology and drugging protein-protein interactions, including the following:

• Michelle Arkin, PhD, professor and chair of pharmaceutical chemistry and co-director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center at the University of California, San Francisco
• Luc Brunsveld, PhD, professor of chemical biology at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e)
• Ambagon chief technology officer Christian Ottmann, PhD, associate professor of molecular cell and structural biology, TU/e.

Ambagon's leadership team includes CEO Scott Clarke, who was previously CEO of Tizona Therapeutics and Trishula Therapeutics, and chief scientific officer (CSO) Nancy Pryer, PhD, who was previously CSO at Day One Biopharmaceuticals and chief development officer at Nurix Therapeutics.

The financing was led by Nextech Invest. Ambagon was previously seeded by RA Capital Management, Droia Ventures, Inkef Capital, AbbVie Ventures, MRL Ventures Fund, and Mission BioCapital. Investors from the seed round joined, along with new investor Surveyor Capital (a Citadel company).