Cancer therapeutic and diagnostic developer Pintex Pharmaceuticals Inc. received a significant endorsement in the form of a $7.25 million Series B preferred financing round completed last month.

The structure-based drug discovery company said it would use the new funding to continue preclinical development efforts for cancer therapeutics that target Pin1, a recently discovered enzyme involved in apoptosis and cell cycle control, and recently implicated in a number of human cancers.

"We have a novel oncology platform that allows communication between the two major families of the signaling molecules - protein kinases and protein phosphotases," Pintex President and CEO Janusz Sowadski told BioWorld Today.

Founded in May 2000, the Watertown, Mass.-based company has raised $10.25 million since its inception. Since then, it has secured exclusive rights to relevant Pin1 technology from the Salk Institute and Harvard Medical School, where company co-founder Kun Ping Lu is an associate professor.

Pintex credited him with the discovery and identification of the human Pin1 gene, adding that he was responsible for elucidating the structure, function and role of Pin1 in human cancer. He works as the chairman of Pintex's scientific advisory board.

Another co-founder, Chairman Walter Gilbert, is the 1980 Nobel Laureate in chemistry. He also is a professor emeritus at Harvard, and in the past co-founded life science companies, including Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen Inc. and Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc.

Prior to co-founding Pintex, Sowadski was co-founder and the vice president of drug discovery at Medford, Mass.-based Kinetix Pharmaceuticals Inc., a structure-based drug discovery company eventually sold to Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen Inc.

But the trio's latest endeavor involves continued progress in developing specific inhibitors of Pin1. Specifically, Pintex aims to use its knowledge of Pin1's X-ray crystal structure to develop inhibitors with high activity and potency against a number of human cancers, while also developing diagnostics that indicate tumor overexpression of Pin1.

"We have a proof-of-concept molecule that inhibits the target to stop the cancer," Sowadski said. "In addition to this therapeutic approach, the company also has a diagnostic focus, which identifies our target molecule being overexpressed in more than 30 tumor indications, including all major tumor indications."

He said Pintex's technology identified high-risk prostate cancer patients, correlating the protein's overexpression with such risk factors.

But Sowadski said the privately held firm initially is focusing on developing small-molecule inhibitors.

"We test them in many different cell lines," he said. "We have a subclass of the molecules that inhibits the selected tumor cell lines, with a very nice therapeutic window between the cancer and the normal cell."

With 10 employees in-house, Pintex has outsourced a good deal of its early stage research to four major academic collaborators. The company is planning to move its preclinical work into animals next month. To further develop its products, Pintex is seeking partnerships with oncology-focused pharmaceutical companies for clinical testing in both its therapeutic and diagnostic areas of focus.

"We're looking for partners in both diagnostic and pharmaceutical work," Sowadski said. "The strategy is to sign a partnership sometime in the middle of this year."

POD Holding, of Boston, and Zero Stage Capital, of Cambridge, led the financing, which also included previous investors BioVentures Investors, also of Cambridge, and Canaan Partners, of Palo Alto, Calif. In conjunction with the investment, Pintex appointed a pair of investor representatives as directors - Peter Lawrence, POD's managing director, and Paul Kelley, Zero Stage's managing director.

Sowadski said the latest round of funding would last about a year. Pintex plans to complete a third round in about November.