Sci­en­tists be­gan with mak­ing re­com­bi­nant ver­sions of nat­u­ral­ly-oc­cur­ring hu­man pro­teins, then grad­u­at­ed to mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies. Now, rather than repli­cat­ing moi­eties with­in the body, re­searchers are mod­i­fy­ing these mol­e­cules to have pre­cise bi­ol­o­gy in a func­tion­al man­ner.

This tech­nol­o­gy, re­ferred to as bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­bod­ies, is al­ready be­ing em­ployed to fight can­cer. In ear­ly 2018, Pan­dion Ther­a­peu­tics was born to re­verse-en­gi­neer the sci­ence in­to the realm of au­toim­mune and in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­or­ders.

Rahul Kakkar

Mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies are de­signed to in­hib­it a path­way, but Pan­dion is tak­ing a mol­e­cule that the body cre­ates, and en­gi­neer­ing it for the bi­ol­o­gy that we want, said com­pa­ny chief Rahul Kakkar in an in­ter­view.

As the com­pa­ny shep­herds its lead ther­a­py in­to pa­tients, on Wednes­day it raised a meaty $80 mil­lion in a fresh round of fi­nanc­ing.

Pan­dion, which counts Astel­las as a part­ner, has cre­at­ed com­po­nents that can be mixed and matched to cre­ate mol­e­cules that have both the bi­o­log­ic and the chem­i­cal ther­a­peu­tic prop­er­ties that we want, Kakkar ex­plained.

“The way I like to think about it is our mol­e­cules rep­re­sent ar­rows, with­in a quiver of ar­rows that rep­re­sents our pipeline,” he said. “So each of these ar­rows has an ar­row­head. The ar­row­head is an en­gi­neered vari­ant of some­thing our bod­ies nat­u­ral­ly use to con­trol the im­mune sys­tem.”

The ar­row­head in the com­pa­ny’s lead pro­gram — PT101 — is a mu­tat­ed vari­ant of in­ter­leukin two. Nat­u­ral­ly, the body us­es IL-2 to ex­pand reg­u­la­to­ry T cells and to en­hance con­ven­tion­al pro-in­flam­ma­to­ry T cells. Pan­dion’s IL-2 two has been en­gi­neered to be high­ly spe­cif­ic for reg­u­la­to­ry T cells, but to have no ef­fect on the oth­er cells. The ther­a­py is cur­rent­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed in healthy vol­un­teers — and if all goes well, come 2021, the com­pound will be test­ed in ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis pa­tients.

The ar­row­head is in charge of the bi­ol­o­gy, but the tail gives the ar­row­head phar­ma­cother­a­peu­tic prop­er­ties that we want. “So we can mar­ry an FC fu­sion, for in­stance, which gives half-life ex­ten­sion, so then that ar­row­head re­sides with­in the sys­temic cir­cu­la­tion, has sys­temic im­mune-mod­u­la­to­ry prop­er­ties and be­haves like an in­jectable bi­o­log­ic,” Kakkar said.

The next junc­ture, which Pan­dion has un­der de­vel­op­ment, is cre­at­ing a bi­func­tion­al or bis­pe­cif­ic, so the tail end ac­tu­al­ly has a func­tion, rather than just half-life ex­ten­sion.

“That tail…is de­signed as a teth­er or a dock, where it binds the ar­row­head with­in an or­gan of in­ter­est so we can, there­fore, guide the ar­row­head in­to spe­cif­ic or­gan sys­tems,” Kakkar said. “So, for in­stance, we can guide it in­to the be­ta cells of the pan­creas, which is where our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Astel­las fo­cus­es.”

The word Pan­dion is the genus name for the os­prey (or a sea hawk), a brown-and-white bird of prey. Spread­ing its wings, it swoops down to wa­ter sur­faces to seize un­sus­pect­ing fish us­ing its talons. “The im­age of a very pre­cise hit with wing­spread ba­si­cal­ly looks like an an­ti­body bind­ing to a very spe­cif­ic lo­cal­iza­tion in ge­og­ra­phy and so that’s ex­act­ly what our mol­e­cules do par­tic­u­lar­ly in the bis­pe­cif­ic for­mat,” said Kakkar.

The Se­ries B was led by Ac­cess Biotech­nol­o­gy, Box­er Cap­i­tal, RA Cap­i­tal and Or­biMed and in­clud­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Po­laris Part­ners, Ver­sant Ven­tures, Roche Ven­ture Fund, SR One, JDRF T1D Fund and BioIn­no­va­tion Cap­i­tal. The Boston-based start­up raised $58 mil­lion in Jan­u­ary 2018.

De­spite the dis­rup­tions faced by the on­go­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, since the biotech in­dus­try is con­sid­ered es­sen­tial in Boston, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to work on its com­pounds, al­though all non-lab per­son­nel are work­ing re­mote­ly.

“Frankly speak­ing, the need of pa­tients suf­fer­ing from au­toim­mune dis­ease con­tin­ues and so as long as that need is there, we con­tin­ue to be fo­cused on ex­e­cut­ing on our goals,” Kakkar said.

That be­ing said, work­ing from home is hard­ly a walk in the park. ” I think we’re all sup­port­ing each oth­er as best we can, but I think it’s a chal­lenge for every­one.”

The FDA late Friday awarded Boehringer Ingelheim the first interchangeability designation for its Humira biosimilar Cyltezo, meaning that when it launches in July 2023, pharmacists will be able to automatically substitute the Boehringer’s version for AbbVie’s mega-blockbuster without a doctor’s input.

The designation will likely give Boehringer, which first won approval for Cyltezo in 2017, the leg up on a crowded field of Humira competitors.

Largely known for its nonpeptide small molecule research, Crinetics has been keeping its radiopharma work comparatively under wraps. But that changed Monday afternoon as the California biotech spun out a new company focused solely on the burgeoning field.

Crinetics launched Radionetics after the closing bell Monday, the company announced, seeding the new entity with $30 million raised from 5AM Ventures and Frazier Healthcare Partners. Radionetics will start with its own radiopharma-centric platform and a pipeline of 10 programs aimed at solid tumors.

About five years ago, Amit Etkin had a breakthrough.

The Stanford neurologist, a soft-spoken demi-prodigy who became a professor while still a resident, had been obsessed for a decade with how to better define psychiatric disorders. Drugs for depression or bipolar disorder didn’t work for many patients with the conditions, and he suspected the reason was how traditional diagnoses didn’t actually get at the heart of what was going on in a patient’s brain.