Gate launches to stop bad proteins at their source

Drug designers try many different tricks to degrade badly behaving proteins. Much of the action in that space comes from companies developing small molecules like proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) , which degrade proteins that operate inside the cell. Gate Bioscience , a start-up backed by Versant Ventures that launched Nov. 1 with $60 million in series A funding, has set its sights on disease-causing proteins that are destined to end up outside the cell. The company’s name hints at the mechanism behind its small molecules, which work within a channel in a cell’s rough endoplasmic reticulum. For many extracellular proteins, getting through this channel is an important step on their path to exit the cell. Gate’s molecules bind in the channel, which prevents disease-causing proteins from escaping and allows good proteins to move freely through. Unable to leave, the stymied proteins are then degraded, according to Gate cofounder and CEO