Foghorn Therapeutics

Foghorn® Therapeutics is pioneering a new class of medicines that target genetic mutations in the chromatin regulatory system, also known as gene traffic control. Dysfunction of the chromatin regulatory system is a major cause of cancer, neurological disorders, and other serious diseases. Over 25 percent of cancers have mutations in this system, making it one of the largest potential classes of oncology drug targets. To date, these targets have not been addressed. The company was co-founded by Cigall Kadoch (Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute), Gerald Crabtree (Stanford and Howard Hughes Medical Institute), and Flagship Pioneering.

Platform

Foghorn is the gene traffic control company. Like the air traffic control system, which coordinates the location, sequence, and timing of airplane traffic, gene traffic control regulates location, sequence, and timing of the factors that control gene expression. The chromatin regulatory system is the cell’s gene traffic control system. Breakdowns in in this system are a major, unexplored cause of cancer and other serious diseases.

Foghorn has a broad proprietary Gene Traffic Control™ product platform based on the biology of the chromatin regulatory system. Foghorn is harnessing the knowledge of this system to develop a new class of drug targets. This approach has revealed previously unrecognized mechanisms responsible for specific cancers and novel therapeutic strategies to treat these diseases. Since its foundation by Flagship Pioneering in 2016, the company has generated new insights into disease, rapidly advanced multiple programs, and built a discovery engine that will simultaneously yield many additional targets.

Foghorn is developing medicines across a range of cancers, exploring applications of gene traffic control in neurology and beyond, and believes that this is just the beginning.