Constellation Pharma closes $32M first funding round

Constellation Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biotech startup focused on epigenetic drugs, reports it has closed a $32 million Series A round of venture capital, a financing originally mentioned in aMass High Tech article earlier this month.

The round was led by venture investors Third Rock Ventures of Boston, The Column Group in San Francisco, and Venrock of Menlo Park, Calif. Constellation said the purpose of the round is to create a discovery platform and to develop pre-clinical drug candidates.

The startup said it's developing drugs based on epigenetics, which involves switching on or off certain genes without altering the structure of DNA.

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Epigenetics has become hot as life sciences companies and investors look to the field to generate powerful new drugs for cancer and other serious diseases.

Founded by scientists at Harvard Medical School, New York University School of Medicine and The Rockefeller University in New York City, Constellation said it plans to advance treatments that modulate epigenetic functions to treat cancer.