Sree Kant, BAKX Therapeutics CEO
BAKX Therapeutics emerged from stealth in a big way back in July, striking an $852 million deal with Ipsen for its lead cancer candidate, a small molecule designed to activate the body’s natural process for programmed cell death. And Ipsen’s putting a bit more cash in the company’s coffers to see that program into the clinic.
CEO Sree Kant unveiled a $25 million Series A round on Thursday, led by AB Magnitude Ventures Group with a hand from Ipsen and Sherpa Healthcare Partners. The funds will be used to advance the company’s BAKX activator program, which traces back to pioneering work around apoptosis by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Loren Walensky and Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Evripidis Gavathiotis.
Apoptosis is a form of programmed cell death used by the body to get rid of unneeded or abnormal cells. But some cancer cells are able to evade this mechanism, multiplying out of control. Companies like BAKX are looking to restore that barrier, inducing cancer cell death while sparing healthy cells.
Most other experimental therapies go after pro-survival proteins called Bcl-2, Bcl-xl and Mcl-1. This strategy, to ‘inhibit the inhibitor,’ has been effective in certain types of leukemia, with one drug, AbbVie and Genentech’s Venclexta, securing approval back in 2016. But as is often the case with cancer therapies, the development of resistance poses a challenge.
Instead, BAKX is targeting pro-apoptotic proteins, such as BAK and BAX, which are downstream of Bcl-2, Bcl-xl and Mcl-1. By directly activating these proteins, scientists believe they can drive apoptosis and destroy tumor cells.
Kant compared the approach to Thelma and Louise at the edge of the cliff. You could drive the cancer cell off the cliff in one of two ways: You can let off the brakes, or press the accelerator. While pro-survival protein inhibitors take the brakes off, BAKX is pressing the accelerator.
The biotech’s lead candidate, a small molecule activator of BAX called BKX-001, is expected to enter the clinic in 18 to 24 months, Kant said conservatively.
‘Hopefully we can do it much, much earlier,’ he added.
Ipsen put down $14.5 million upfront and $837.5 million in biobucks to collaborate on the candidate back in July. While the partners are hoping to go after leukemia, lymphoma and solid tumors, Kant says they’ll likely focus on hematology first. BAKX also has two discovery programs for undisclosed targets up its sleeve.
‘I wasn’t looking at science which would be a good story I can sell to the investors,’ Kant said. ‘The only thing I’m thinking of is science that I can make a drug with. So if my daughter asks me what do you do for a living, I can tell her I make drugs.’
For years, paper-based processes and individual point solutions dominated the clinical research landscape, and patient participation in clinical trials was largely an in-person engagement. But when the COVID-19 pandemic took a stronghold, traditional clinical trial methods emerged as inadequate, putting clinical trials and the life sciences industry at a crossroads. Practically overnight, the industry had to rapidly shift to decentralized clinical trial methods, while maintaining data quality and regulatory compliance.
Douglas Fambrough, Dicerna CEO (Dicerna via YouTube)
Early this year researchers at Novo Nordisk were beaming as they announced the first drug identified in their RNAi alliance with Dicerna was headed into the clinic. And now they’re coming back for the whole thing.
This morning the Copenhagen-based pharma giant put out word that it is buying Dicerna $DRNA — an RNAi pioneer that has had its up and downs over the years — for $3.3 billion. Novo is paying $38.25 a share — an 80% premium.
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Gilead is going all in — hook, line and sinker — on its oncology alliance with Arcus. And they are going for broke.
The big biotech unveiled a deal that now delivers $725 million in opt-in payments covering the clinical development programs for Arcus, ranging from their closely watched anti-TIGIT programs for domvanalimab and AB308 to etrumadenant (the A2a/A2b adenosine receptor antagonist) and quemliclustat, the small molecule CD73 inhibitor. Gilead will also cover half of the development costs, handing Terry Rosen’s biotech a deal that gives them a clear cash runway to achieving all its goals in oncology.
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Thermo Fisher CEO Mark Casper
Another week, another win for the North Carolina biotech community.
This time, it’s Thermo Fisher Scientific, the Massachusetts-based contract giant, that recently announced it had plans to build a manufacturing plant. The winner is? Mebane, NC, a 15,000-person town 25 miles northwest of Durham.
The 375,000-square-foot plant at the Buckhorn Industrial Park will manufacture pipette tips for laboratory research and bioscience use. It’s a result from a $192.5 million contract with the Department of Defense that was announced back in September, in which the company pledged to increase its ability to support Covid-19 testing.
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Protein degradation is one of the hot drug classes of the future, but competitors are piling in with the likes of C4, Arvinas, Frontier Medicines and Vividion jostling for position. A new startup wants to apply the lessons learned from degradation outside the cell, and it now has the greenlight from RA Capital to steam ahead.
Avilar Therapeutics launched Thursday with $60 million from founding investor RA to chase a novel protein degradation drug class the startup is calling ATACs— short for ‘ASGPR Targeting Chimeras’ — that looks to trash unwanted proteins circulating outside the human cell.
A new cell and gene therapy testing facility in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard is officially opened, WuXi ATU announced Monday.
The new facility includes 140,000 square feet worth of laboratories, and will enhance the company’s contract testing, development and manufacturing organization business model by tripling the company’s previous capacity.
The move helps strengthen the existing testing capacity and capability, and combines the company’s powerful testing capabilities with its advanced therapies’ process development and manufacturing platforms, such as TESSA technology for AAV manufacturing and XLenti stable solutions for lentiviral manufacturing, it says in a press release.
The holding company of a South Korean vaccine maker is in the final talks to make an investment into a US gene therapy firm.
SK Biosciences is in the process of signing a deal with the Center for Breakthrough Medicines (CBM), a Philadelphia-based CDMO. If finalized, the deal will come eight months after SK’s takeover of the French gene and cell therapy company Yposkesi.
With this move, SK takes itself a step closer to establishing a value chain of synthetic and bio pharmaceuticals in the US, Europe and Asia by 2025, the company’s head of the investment center Lee Dong-hoon said in a presentation. The CBM is known for its production of plasmid DNA. With SK’s investment, it will expand manufacturing facility in the Cellicon Valley cell and gene therapy cluster by 699,654 square feet.
Generate co-founder Molly Gibson and CEO Mike Nally
As the future of machine learning and AI promises to make major breakthroughs in drug development, a suite of startups is looking to scale their own competing robot brain trusts. An ambitious startup out of Flagship Pioneering’s incubator uncloaked last year with its own spin in that arms race — and now it’s primed and ready for a major expansion in the coming years.
Generate Biomedicines has closed a giant $370 million Series B from founding investor Flagship as well as Alaska Permanent Fund, Altitude Life Science Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, the company said.
Neil Kumar, BridgeBio CEO
The way BridgeBio tells it, it’s been up to some big things recently. And on Thursday, the biotech just got a whole lot more cash to turn its dreams into reality.
BridgeBio took out a $750 million loan on Thursday, separated into two tranches of $450 million and $300 million. The first, larger tranche will be available for BridgeBio to spend immediately, while the biotech can opt into the second, smaller tranche after one of two conditions related to its pipeline is met.
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