Analysis
Khartis Therapeutics emerged from stealth on August 13 with $95 million in total funding, including a new $50 million Series B led by Forge Life Science Partners, according to Axios. Longwood Fund and Alexandria Venture Investments joined the round, alongside existing backers Foresite Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures and Nextech Invest.
The company is developing an oral, selective IGF-1R inhibitor designed specifically for thyroid eye disease -- a condition currently treated almost exclusively with injectable biologics like Amgen's Tepezza, which costs tens of thousands of dollars per course and requires infusion visits. A pill alternative, if it clears trials, would compete directly against that injectable standard of care on convenience and cost, the same playbook a growing number of biotech startups are running against biologics across immunology and endocrinology.
“Khartis's bet is that specialization plus a proven founding team is enough to win a defensible slice of a market currently dominated by one injectable franchise.”
Khartis was founded in 2024 by CEO Robert Hoffman, Chief Scientific Officer Craig Murphy and Executive Chairman Chris LeMasters, much of the team having previously worked together at XinThera before Gilead Sciences acquired that company in 2023. That prior exit gives the founding team a track record investors can underwrite against, which matters in a funding environment where biotech Series B rounds increasingly go to teams with a completed cycle behind them rather than first-time founders on a novel thesis alone.
Beyond the lead thyroid eye disease program, Khartis says it's advancing additional oral small-molecule candidates targeting other clinically validated immunology pathways -- a hedge against the risk that any single program fails in the clinic, which is the norm rather than the exception in biotech. The company hasn't disclosed a timeline for its first clinical trial readout, and an oral small molecule still has to clear the same efficacy bar the injectable biologics it's chasing have already established in approved label claims.
Oral-versus-injectable is a crowded thesis right now across immunology -- from oral GLP-1 competitors to oral IL-23 programs -- and thyroid eye disease specifically is a narrower, more specialized indication than most of those. Khartis's bet is that specialization plus a proven founding team is enough to win a defensible slice of a market currently dominated by one injectable franchise.
