Sunesis Pharmaceuticals

The company was founded in 1998 by Jim Wells, formerly of Genentech. Sunesis filed and completed an IPO in 2005. It is listed on NASDAQ as SNSS.

Sunesis uses a "tethering" drug-development platform, focused on a dynamic combinatorial chemistry method applied to the mutation of proteins, allowing for targeted delivery of drugs to patient tissues.In 2013, Sunesis was in the process of evaluating vosaroxin via clinical trials. By May 2017, the company had submitted and withdrawn a European Marketing Authorization Application for this drug in the treatment of relapsed or recurrent acute myeloid leukemia. The pivotal trial for vosaroxin failed to show demonstrable efficacy, which was its undoing. Both the FDA and EMA had granted vosaroxin orphan drug status.Following this setback, the company's lead compound became SNS-062, also known as vecabrutinib, a non-covalent inhibitor of Bruton's tyrosine kinase aimed at helping leukemia patients with a C481S mutation that makes them less responsive to Ibrutinib, a generic drug with general efficiency in around 90% of patients. Vecabrutinib was developed by Biogen Idec and licensed by Sunesis in 2014. In addition to vecabrutinib, the company's kinase inhibitor portfolio also includes SNS-229 and SNS-510, candidate drugs in pre-clinical development.

Sunesis had two collaborations with Biogen Idec: the first, established in late 2002, concerned co-development of treatments for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases; the second, established in 2004, concerned codevelopment of kinase inhibitors for treatment of cancer.