Cambridge’s Convergent raises $90 million for prostate cancer drug

Radiation therapy has been used to treat cancer for more than a century, and about half of all cancer patients still undergo it at some point, according to the National Cancer Institute. Typically, patients receive beams of radiation from a machine that kills cancer cells inside their bodies but can also damage healthy tissue. In the past decade, however, the Food and Drug Administration has approved several drugs called radiopharmaceuticals that use a more precise approach. Injected into the bloodstream, the medicines contain radioactive atoms that deliver radiation to targeted cells, attacking tumors while limiting damage to surrounding tissues. On Wednesday, a Cambridge biotech making inroads in the growing field said it has raised $90 million in venture capital in its first fund-raising round. The startup, Convergent Therapeutics, plans to use the money to advance what it calls “next-generation radiopharmaceuticals,” including its lead program to combat advanced prostate cancer. Dr. Philip Kantoff, Convergent’s chief executive and an medical oncologist, cited the blockbuster success of Novartis’s radiopharmaceutical Pluvicto. The FDA approved that treatment in 2022. “Novartis opened up the field,” said Kantoff, who worked at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York for about 35 years before leaving in 2021. “We think there’s a tremendous opportunity to expand on what they’ve done.” Kantoff cofounded Convergent with Dr. Neil Bander, a professor of urologic oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. Bander is an authority on the biology of a protein on the surface of prostate cancer cells, called prostate-specific membrane antigen, or P.S.M.A. Novartis’s radiopharmaceutical, Pluvicto, also targets P.S.M.A. But it uses a chemical compound known as a small molecule to deliver radiation-emitting particles that kill prostate cancer cells, Kantoff said. And the radiation comes in the form of beta particles. In contrast, Convergent plans to use a protein in the immune system called antibodies to deliver radiation-emitting particles, and the radiation comes in the form of alpha particles, which Kantoff says are 1,000 times more powerful than beta particles.