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Oncology startup FogPharma just closed a $145 million Series E round, the company confirmed, reaching a late stage of financing that few other biotechs have hit in recent years.

FogPharma, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., is developing cancer treatments using corkscrew-shaped peptides called helicons that could possibly better breach cells.

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As CEO Mathai Mammen sees it, very few exemplary medicines shuttle off of drug companies’ pipelines, wade through clinical trials, and end up in the hands of physicians and patients in a given year. Far more often, pharma and biotech companies are pushing out drugs that are incrementally better than what came before, extending cancer patients’ survival by a few more months, halting their tumor growth for a little while longer. But FogPharma could deliver something truly unique, Mammen said.

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