About one year after its sale to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMS), Boston-based IFM Therapeutics LLC is launching a subsidiary called IFM Tre with a $31 million series A round to support research into NLRP3 antagonists, "a very competitive space, both in the biotech and the pharma sector," Gary Glick, CEO and co-founder, told BioWorld. "NLRP3 is very large, and no one has been able to reproduce it recombinantly," he said. "The structure is not well-characterized. There are no natural ligands for it. [Researchers can't use] a lot of the tricks that folks would use and the tools that would be employed to find chemical matter early. It's very hard to work with."