Sotio partners with Merck to test lead candidate with Keytruda; DC’s KeifeRx raises $6M in Series A — and brings on two new board members

Biotech Hub / By

So­tio has been on a roll late­ly.

The qui­et Czech biotech based in Prague got a mas­sive $315 mil­lion raise last week, and now the biotech an­nounced to­day that it’s joined in on a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mer­ck to eval­u­ate a com­bo of So­tio’s lead can­di­date SOT101 with Mer­ck’s PD-1 an­ti­body Keytru­da.

The two drugs will be test­ed in pa­tients with ad­vanced/re­frac­to­ry sol­id tu­mors in a Phase II tri­al. Ac­cord­ing to So­tio’s CEO, the two drugs com­bined had al­ready shown ef­fi­ca­cy in an on­go­ing Phase I/Ib tri­al.

As part of the arrange­ment be­tween the two com­pa­nies, the study is ex­pect­ed to en­roll up to 300 pa­tients across six in­di­ca­tions, in­clud­ing sec­ond-line NSCLC and sec­ond-line ovar­i­an can­cer.

KeifeRx un­veils $6M Se­ries A and two board ap­point­ments to ad­vance neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive-fo­cused drug can­di­dates

DC biotech KeifeRx an­nounced a small Se­ries A this morn­ing — at $6 mil­lion, along­side some new board ap­point­ments. The in­vest­ment, cour­tesy of un­named ex­ist­ing and new in­vestors, will be used to ad­vance KeifeRx’s pipeline of oral ty­ro­sine ki­nase in­hibitors, or TKIs.

And these TKIs are be­ing de­vel­oped for neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkin­son’s and Hunt­ing­ton’s dis­ease. Ac­cord­ing to KeifeRx, there will be an up­com­ing Phase III tri­al for its lead can­di­date, Nilo­tinib BE for Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

‘This fi­nanc­ing and the Board ap­point­ments pro­vide the ground­work for KeifeRx to ini­ti­ate the Nilo­tinib BE Phase III clin­i­cal tri­al in ear­ly 2022,’ said KeifeRx CEO Chris Hoyt in a pre­pared state­ment.

As part of the fund­ing, KeifeRx ap­point­ed Ja­nis Buchanan and Matthew Pet­zold to its board of di­rec­tors. Ms. Buchanan, who co-found­ed a fund at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty for fel­low­ships for move­ment dis­or­der spe­cial­ists, will serve as chair of the board. Mean­while, Matthew Pet­zold is the CFO of Sprout Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, the Raleigh biotech that de­vel­oped the con­tro­ver­sial fe­male li­bido drug Ad­dyi a few years ago.
https://endpts.com/sotio-partners-with-merck-to-test-lead-candidate-with-keytruda-dcs-keiferx-raises-6m-in-series-a-and-brings-on-two-new-board-members/

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