Simon Read, Curie Therapeutics CEO
Amid a renaissance in the field of radiopharmaceuticals, a growing chorus of biopharma players is rushing the stage to capitalize on tech breakthroughs. Biotech blue-chippers RA Capital and Atlas Venture, sensing an opportunity, are now setting up their own startup to challenge the big boys.
Curie Therapeutics uncloaked from stealth Wednesday with $75 million in Series A funding from Atlas, RA and Access Biotechnology, with the goal of leveraging a seasoned team of experts to get the jump on the growing class of cancer therapeutics, the biotech said.
In an unusual arrangement, Curie was incubated by all three of its founding funders, running for about 18 months in stealth mode before making its debut. According to CEO Simon Read, formerly chief scientific officer at Ra Pharma before its acquisition by UCB in early 2020, the Curie team in that time built a leadership team of 15 specializing in all aspects of radiopharmaceuticals, which link radioactive isotopes to a small molecule to target tumors.
While pipeline details are slim, Curie’s mission is broad — and that’s not an accident. The team sees radiopharmaceuticals as a potentially expansive class of therapeutics and has spent its year and a half behind the scenes diving deep not only into radiochemistry and biology but also CMC, supply and clinical translation. The class has historically suffered from both supply chain issues — it’s hard to continuously source the radioactive material used in these drugs — as well as at the bedside, with earlier-generation radiopharmaceuticals doing a poor job of targeting specific tissues.
‘Solid tumors are really poorly treated by existing targeted technologies, and although there are some advantages, there are still challenges with technologies like CAR-T, BiTEs, ADCs in solid tumors,’ Read said. ‘So we began to sit up and take notice, I think, of some of the data that was coming from breakthrough therapies … (that) galvanized the enthusiasm to begin thinking about radiopharmaceuticals.’
Where Curie hopes to set itself apart is in its holistic strategy for radiopharmaceutical development, looking at the drug’s PD and PK properties as a whole rather than optimizing each modular element of a drug’s composition before considering its potential efficacy in humans. Meanwhile, the company is focusing on both peptide and non-peptide ligands to identify the best possible solutions for deep tissue penetration, hopefully limiting off-target side effects in organs like the kidney.
Read admits the class — which has seen some big breakthroughs in recent years from the likes of Novartis’ Lutathera and Lu-PSMA-617, a radiopharmaceutical targeting a prostate cancer receptor with a radioactive form of lutetium — has grown increasingly congested in recent years. But Curie’s expert scientific team could help it get a head start on the growing field.
‘We believed that if we could get leaders from all of those spaces under one roof, we would be able to truly build best-in-class type medicines,’ he said. ‘Curie began with that basic concept of building the company in the space and focusing on not can you do it, but how do you do it the best.’
So far, Curie’s pipeline remains a mystery with Read staying mum on exactly which targets are in the gunsights first and the company’s release on the matter referencing only ‘high unmet need solid tumors.’ However, a pipeline had begun to round into form during Curie’s stealth mode, and Read expects that more would be on the way on that front in the coming year.
Read hinted that the biotech would utilize both alpha-emitting radioisotopes for its therapies — the modality du jour in the space — but also focus on beta emitters, like lutetium, which he said could still have a place in clinical practice in tackling larger tumors.
Meanwhile, the team of 15 is expected to increase to 45 by this time next year, Read said, as the company approaches human trials.
While oncology researchers have long pursued the potential of cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, it was unclear whether these therapies would ever reach patients due to the complexity of manufacturing and costs of development. Fortunately, the recent successful development and regulatory approval of chimeric antigen receptor-engineered T (CAR-T) cells have demonstrated the significant benefit of these therapies to patients.
Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO
Even as public health officials remain guarded about their comments on the likelihood Omicron will escape the reach of the currently approved Covid-19 vaccines, there’s growing scientific consensus that we’re facing a variant that threatens to overwhelm the vaccine barricades that have been erected.
Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, one of the leading mRNA players whose quick vault into the markets with a highly effective vaccine created an instant multibillion-dollar market, added his voice to the rising chorus early Tuesday. According to Bancel, there will be a significant drop in efficacy when the average immune system is confronted by Omicron. The only question now is: How much?
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The nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review on Wednesday released a new report highlighting the ways in which payers are generally ensuring fair access to prescription drugs, even when based on a set of criteria set by the nonprofit.
While noting the lack of transparency hindered the report’s results, ICER said that the ‘great majority’ of payer policies in the formularies evaluated are structured in a way to support many key elements of how ICER defines ‘fair access.’
Reshma Kewalramani, Vertex CEO (Vertex via YouTube)
Vertex claimed its second early-stage win of the fall Wednesday, announcing positive results in a small study on a genetically defined form of kidney disease.
The 16-patient, Phase II trial focused on patients with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a rare disease where kidneys are unable to filter blood properly. Over 13 weeks on an experimental pill, the level of protein in the patients’ urine fell by an average of 47.6%.
Paul Hudson, Sanofi CEO (Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Paul Hudson has spotlighted vaccines, immunology and dermatology as some of the top R&D focuses at Sanofi. His latest deal brings all of them together.
The French pharma giant isn’t sharing any financial details about the buyout of Origimm, a low-profile, private Austrian biotech whose technology promises to identify antigens causing skin disease and build vaccines against them. Their lead candidate targets acne vulgaris.
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Philip Dormitzer, new GSK global head of vaccines R&D
GlaxoSmithKline has appointed Philip Dormitzer, formerly chief scientific officer of Pfizer’s viral vaccines unit, as its newest global head of vaccines R&D, looking to leverage one of the leading minds behind Pfizer and BioNTech’s RNA collaboration that led to Covid-19 jab Comirnaty, the British drug giant said Tuesday.
Dormitzer had been with Pfizer for a little more than six years, joining up after a seven-year stint with Novartis, where he reached the role of US head of research and head of global virology for the company’s vaccines and diagnostics unit.
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In a first, China has featured insulin in its centralized drug procurement program — but the bulk order comes at a sizable cost for multinational pharma players.
Novo Nordisk, Sanofi and Eli Lilly were among eight companies, domestic and foreign, whose insulin products won tenders from the Chinese public hospital system. In exchange, the drugs’ prices were cut, on average, by 48%, saving the medical institutions a collective $1.4 billion on the first batch of 210 million doses, according to state media.
Looking at past test samples, Dutch officials have detected the Omicron variant in cases dating back as far as Nov. 19, adding further evidence that the variant arrived in Europe well before the first cases were detected in South Africa.
The samples in question were taken on Nov. 19 and 23, according to the country’s health institute, RIVM.
‘It is not yet clear whether these people had also visited southern Africa,’ the RIVM said in a statement.
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