The platforms are distinct but the end game is identical. Rare disease company Allena Pharmaceuticals Inc., anti-infectives developer Spero Therapeutics LLC and cancer therapy hopeful Erytech Pharma SA filed for U.S. IPOs, joining Ablynx NV, which filed days earlier, to extend the biopharma trek to the public markets into the fourth quarter.
In January 1905, the world’s largest gem-quality rough diamond was discovered at the Premier No. 2 mine in Cullinan, modern-day South Africa, and cut into several polished gemstones, some of which became part of Great Britain’s Crown Jewels. Cullinan Oncology LLC hopes to imitate that feat by building a portfolio of oncology assets from one-off opportunities whose profile makes them unsuitable for single-asset companies.
Looking to one-up early stage entries in harnessing CRISPR technology, 2-year-old KSQ Therapeutics burst onto the biopharma scene with $76 million across two financing rounds and an aspiration to pioneer what it called "high-confidence" drug development.
A year after its seed financing, Peptilogics Inc. closed a $5.5 million series A to advance its engineered cationic antibiotic peptide, or ECAP, platform to ply multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections. The ECAP mechanism enables direct targeting and disruption of bacterial membranes without lysing, causing rapid death of both dormant and growing bacterial cells.
History did not repeat itself for cannabinoid developer Zynerba Pharmaceuticals Inc. A month after shares (NASDAQ:ZYNE) of the Devon, Pa.-based company lost more than half their value following a primary endpoint miss in the phase II study of lead candidate cannabidiol (CBD) gel ZYN-002, which failed to reduce focal seizures in adults with epilepsy, Zynerba rebounded in a big way with top-line findings from the open-label exploratory phase II FAB-C (Treatment of Fragile X Syndrome Anxiety and Behavioral Challenges with CBD) trial evaluating the same agent in pediatric and adolescent patients with fragile X syndrome (FXS).
Despite big boasts about the novelty of its 5-hydroxytryptamine6 (5-HT6) pathway approach to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD), Axovant Sciences Ltd. found its phase III effort just as wanting as those of every other biopharma that's sought in recent years to tame the deadly neurodegenerative disease.
After a multiyear incubation period at New York-based Pfizer Inc., Springworks Therapeutics LLC sprang to life with four Pfizer-derived candidates and an oversubscribed $103 million kitty to see them to the next stage of development. The syndicate for the company’s series A included Bain Capital Life Sciences, Bain Capital Double Impact, Orbimed and Lifearc (formerly MRC Technology), along with Pfizer, which also handed over global rights to the initial compounds.
A slew of good news in September brightened the outlook for individuals with asthma, estimated by the NIH to include more than 25 million in the U.S. alone, including 7 million children – many of them poorly controlled with existing medications.
Startup Lifemine Therapeutics Inc. followed up its $5 million seed round, quietly raised last year, with a $55 million series A led by Wuxi Healthcare Ventures, which was joined by Foresite Capital, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Arch Ventures, Boyu Capital, Blue Pool Capital, Merck Ventures and Alexandria Venture Investments. Co-founded by Harvard Medical School professor, serial entrepreneur and investor Gregory Verdine, who serves as president, CEO and chief scientific officer, Lifemine is seeking to scale the genomic discovery of drugs from eukaryotic microbes, or fungi, by combining genomics with artificial intelligence and synthetic biology.
