Phoenix, AZ, January 29, 2026 (Globe Newswire): Breakthru Medicine emerges from stealth mode with the close of a $60M Series A financing round following a prior undisclosed seed round.
Breakthru was founded by biotech industry veterans Steve Potts, PhD, Mark Mulvihill, PhD, and Brian Barnett, MD, to deliver disruptive therapeutic modalities to cancer patients to address major unmet medical needs.
Steve Potts, CEO, Breakthru Medicine
Steve Potts has been involved in both the companion diagnostic and cancer drug development sides of targeted therapies, in addition to building companies with successful products and high-performing biotech teams. Mark Mulvihill’s biotech leadership has delivered high-quality, cutting-edge small-molecule development candidates into the clinic consistently, including early days at OSI Pharmaceuticals, recently at HiberCell’s stress biology programs, and the key technical leadership of Warp Drive Bio’s industry-first non-degrader molecular glues (now Revolution Medicines). Brian Barnett is a medical oncologist who has played a key role across the full spectrum of oncology care and drug development, including multiple IND and Phase 1 programs, pivotal trials and negotiations with regulatory authorities, and successful commercial launches—most notably the first solid tumor antibody–drug conjugate at Genentech—and previously served as both a community and academic practicing physician.
The Board and investors include Dave Morehead, who has been a limited partner in several top biotech venture funds and leads Baylor University’s $2.5 billion endowment, and whose track record of investment over-performance was recognized as the 2025 Endowment/Foundation Chief Investment Officer of the Year during Institutional Investor’s Allocator Awards; Fred Eshelman, PharmD, of Eshelman Ventures, whose numerous contributions to the biotech industry include founding and leading Pharmaceutical Product Development (2011 acquisition $3.9 billion, 2021 acquisition $17.4 billion), which became a cornerstone of the Research Triangle Park biotech ecosystem; and Mark Gergen who has been instrumental in the success of multiple biotech companies and their value-creating biotech exits totaling over $14 billion and multiple strategic partnerships exceeding $30 billion in value.
“In creating Breakthru Medicine, we assembled an incredible in-house team that over the course of their careers have been directly involved in more than a dozen therapies that are currently approved or in late-stage clinical trials, with the majority of these having received FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation,” said Steve Potts, Chief Executive Officer. “An aspirational goal for the company is to set a high bar for development candidates—to be able to pattern recognize early which programs truly are likely to achieve breakthrough success and ruthlessly eliminate those that will not. We are taking a patient-first, tumor-agnostic targeting approach that requires disruptive therapeutic modalities.”
“At Breakthru Medicine, we are redefining what’s possible by bringing every modality to the table to tackle the hardest-to-drug targets,” said Mark Mulvihill, Chief Scientific Officer. “From small molecules to next-generation ADC payloads and molecular glues, our platform is designed to expand the druggable universe for patients who urgently need new options.”
The company is not publicly disclosing details at this time on their emerging molecular glue platform, or pipeline in small molecules and novel antibody-drug conjugate payloads. They focus on targeted therapy areas that affect many cancer patients, where existing approaches have had limited success.
For more information, please visit https://www.breakthrumed.com/.
SOURCE: Breakthru Medicine