Foresite’s Tananbaum, TCG’s Chen believe Perlmutter-led newco can parlay microscopy innovation, protein dynamics into pathfinding way to discover drugs

In joining Eikon’s $148 million series A round, Foresite’s Jim Tananbaum and TCG’s Leon Chen are betting that the start-up can use super-resolution microscopy and ancillary technologies to generate entirely new datasets based on protein dynamics that can inform drug discovery. To advance its first programs, the company has hired Merck R&D veteran Roger Perlmutter out of retirement as its CEO.

Formed about a year ago and fostered in stealth mode until this week, Hayward, Calif.-based Eikon Therapeutics Inc. is aiming to industrialize technology developed by Eric Betzig and collaborators, who won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their innovations in fluorescence microscopy that enable the visualization of protein movements. Betzig is a professor at the University of California Berkeley and a senior fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus...