Stopping Cancer: Why We Invested in Vironexis
Like many of you, cancer has unfortunately been in my family for over 15 years. My wife was first diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in 2009 and, almost 10 years later to the day, with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. My mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 bile duct cancer in May 2023. Both my wife and my mother will be taking chemotherapy for the rest of their lives, however long their lives will be.
My family is not alone in this: 40.5% of all men and women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Cancer is the leading cause of death in the world and the second-leading cause in the U.S.
Doctors and scientists have been working hard for decades to change this, and treatment outcomes have been gradually improving. Cancer is no longer a death sentence, and many people go on to live healthy lives for years or even decades after they are first diagnosed. Despite that, there is no cure — and try as we may to control our lifestyle, diet, and environment, there isn’t a surefire way to prevent cancer either.
I believe that this will change — and soon.
Vironexis is a gene therapy platform that targets circulating tumor cells in the bloodstream, preventing deadly metastases. The company’s ultimate vision is to create a single-dose shot that will delay or prevent the onset of certain cancer types altogether. And it gets better: Vironexis was founded by a team of extraordinary leaders whose years of success in the medical field and biotech make this ambitious mission a likely reality.
Vironexis’s Co-founder & CEO, Samit Varma, is a long-time friend of mine and an even longer-time friend of Kelly’s, who we admire and respect. Samit and Kelly co-invested in Scopely, a gaming company that exited for $4.9 billion last year. We think so highly of Samit that we asked him to come on board as a partner when we were first starting Moonshots Capital. The time wasn’t right for us to join forces, and Samit started his own venture capital firm, Troy Capital. He later showed me his idea for Quid on a napkin at his house. Quid is now the number one firm in the secondary liquidity market with $1B in AUM and backed by Oaktree, Davidson Kempner, and others.
Samit is a highly successful VC and founder for 20+ years, but he is most passionate about building medical and biotech companies whose innovations save lives. He has already successfully exited three biotech enterprises as CEO and co-founder. Rounding out the Moonshots “checklist” of ideal founder criteria, Samit is a a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a U.S. Navy veteran.
Kelly and I have always consciously avoided biotech and pharmaceuticals when investing: it is a hard-to-break-into, heavily regulated industry with many unknowns at every stage of product development. However, when Vironexis came along, we invested with conviction due to our confidence in Samit’s leadership abilities and the exceptional domain expertise that comes from executing the same business model repeatedly with the same team.
Vironexis is Samit’s third biotech venture working with Dr. Brian Kaspar. Prior to this, Samit and Brian also started Celenex and Motus Bio, which were acquired by Amicus Therapeutics in 2018 and Insmed Inc in 2021, respectively. Dr. Kaspar is the leading gene therapy scientist in the world and has spent his whole career focused on bringing breakthrough cellular therapies to the market. He was the creator of one of the most successful gene therapeutics in the world. He was Chief Science Officer developing Zolgensma, a medication that allows children with spinal muscular atrophy to live healthy lives where they once would not have lived past two years of age.
Samit invested in Dr. Kaspar’s company to commercialize Zolgensma, ultimately resulting in its acquisition by Novartis for $8.7 billion in 2018. Dr. Kaspar and Samit have now founded their third company together, Vironexis, and Dr. Kaspar serves as a Co-founder of the company.
Dr. Kaspar’s scientific excellence, coupled with Samit’s proven business acumen, drew in Vironexis’s third co-founder, Dr. Timothy Cripe. Dr. Cripe is a Professor and Chief of Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and a specialist in pediatric blood cancers with a strong background in gene therapy. He and his team are partnering with Samit and Dr. Kaspar to commercialize his revolutionary cell therapy discovery. Dr. Cripe serves as Vironexis’s Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer.
Team Vironexis will start by tackling leukemia and continue on to breast cancer, with other forms of cancer coming afterwards. The company produced exceptional results in pre-clinical studies and is excited to continue their research with human clinical trials that will be starting later this year. The FDA has already approved the trial to begin and patients will be dosed before the end of the year in what is now the first adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy targeting cancer in the world.
Vironexis’s mission is as promising as it is ambitious, and their success could massively impact lives and longevity. Given the prevalence of cancer, the difficulty and costliness of its treatment, and morbidity rates that still defy state-of-the-art therapeutic advancements, it is hard to imagine any pharmaceutical product with a more expansive market. The extensive experience and success of the founding team in developing and commercializing advanced medical discoveries makes Vironexis well-positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. Like most great human achievements, putting an end to cancer will be driven by extraordinary leadership.
Moonshots Capital was honored to join in the funding of this transformative project in a $26M Series Seed round led by Future Ventures and Drive Capital, who we also have existing relationships with. The round was further augmented with participation from Capital Factory and several individual investors. Together, we are hopeful for their potential to succeed and rid the world of cancer for good.
Moonshots Capital is a military veteran-founded venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups with extraordinary leaders.
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