Khartis Exits Stealth With $95M for Thyroid Eye Disease
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Khartis Therapeutics has come out of stealth with $95 million in total funding, following a $50 million Series B led by Forge Life Science Partners. Longwood Fund, Alexandria Venture Investments, Foresite Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures and Nextech Invest all participated.
The San Diego company is working on oral small molecule medicines aimed at immunology pathways that have already been clinically validated, which is a deliberately less speculative position than chasing novel biology.
Its lead program is an oral selective IGF-1R inhibitor for thyroid eye disease. Existing treatment in that condition involves infusions, so a pill that hits the same target would change how patients experience the therapy rather than only whether it works.
Khartis was founded in 2024 by Robert Hoffman, who serves as chief executive and head of drug discovery, chief scientific officer Craig Murphy, and executive chairman Chris LeMasters. The three of them, along with much of the scientific team, previously worked together at XinThera, which Gilead Sciences acquired in 2023.
A team that has already built and sold a biotech together tends to raise faster, and $95 million before the company had publicly announced itself reflects that. The remaining capital funds the broader California pipeline.
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