Verastem Oncology
Pharmaceutical company in Masachussets, United States
Verastem, Inc., doing business as Verastem Oncology, is an American pharmaceutical company that develops medicines to treat certain cancers. Headquartered and founded in Boston, Massachusetts, the firm is a member of NASDAQ Biotechnology Index.
History
Verastem Oncology (Verastem Inc) was co-founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Christoph H. Westphal and venture capitalist Michelle Dipp, who provided seed funding and initial office space in Cambridge, MA. The company was formed to commercialize the work of the three other co-founders, MIT biologists Robert Weinberg, Eric S. Lander and Piyush Gupta, by discovering and developing drugs to treat cancer by targeting cancer stem cells.
The company raised $16 million in the initial Series A financing.
Westphal served as CEO and chairman of the board from 2010 to 2013. Under his leadership, the company raised $55 million through an IPO in 2012. Mr. Robert Forrester succeeded Christoph Westphal as Verastem's president and CEO in 2013. In July 2019, Brian Stuglik was appointed to chief executive officer (CEO) of Verastem Oncology.
Pipeline
Their leading investigational drug is defactinib (VS-6063), is a small-molecule focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitor designed to kill cancer stem cells, intended for the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma.
The public source identifies “Verastem Oncology” as pharmaceutical company in Masachussets, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Verastem, Oncology and Pharmaceutical.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Verastem Oncology”, the useful work is to connect “pharmaceutical company in Masachussets, United States” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30289308. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2013, 2012 and 2019.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Verastem Oncology”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Verastem Oncology primary sources, Verastem Oncology archive and Verastem research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Verastem Oncology”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Verastem Oncology” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.