Ben Neel (L) and Raj Chopra

Up­dat­ed: New Ap­ple Tree biotech emerges with an­ti­bod­ies that might pair with Am­gen, Mi­rati's KRAS drugs

Ap­ple Tree Part­ners is out Mon­day with a new biotech from the labs of NYU Lan­gone Health that aims to tack­le drug re­sis­tance in can­cer.

Aethon Ther­a­peu­tics will get $25 mil­lion from the VC firm, and an­oth­er $5 mil­lion from New York Uni­ver­si­ty and oth­er in­vestors, the New York-based biotech said Mon­day.

The fledg­ling start­up is work­ing off a so-called HapIm­mune im­munother­a­py plat­form from the labs of Shohei Koide and Ben­jamin Neel at NYU’s Perl­mut­ter Can­cer Cen­ter. The two re­searchers be­gan pon­der­ing the idea about three and a half years ago, Neel told End­points News, and they came to Ap­ple Tree’s head of on­col­o­gy Raj Chopra about a year ago to form the com­pa­ny.

In a state­ment, Chopra, the act­ing CEO, said Ap­ple Tree was struck by the work out of Koide and Neel’s labs: “That when co­va­lent in­hibitors bind to their tar­get pro­teins in­side can­cer cells, they pro­duce a pep­tide con­ju­gate ‘bea­con’ that is de­liv­ered on­ly to the sur­face of can­cer cells, not to healthy cells. Aethon has dis­cov­ered cus­tomized an­ti­bod­ies that home in on that bea­con, mak­ing the can­cer cells vul­ner­a­ble to at­tack.”

Shohei Koide

“One day, we were think­ing about how re­mark­able it was that all of a sud­den RAS was be­com­ing drug­gable and par­tic­u­lar­ly that KRAS G12C was be­ing drugged with co­va­lent in­hibitors,” Neel said about his con­ver­sa­tions with Koide a few years ago. But the re­spons­es aren’t that durable as re­sis­tance builds up, he said.

So, Aethon is mak­ing an­ti­bod­ies us­ing its HapIm­mune plat­form to drum up the T cells to specif­i­cal­ly thwart tu­mor cells. The an­ti­bod­ies are re­for­mat­ted in­to cus­tom bis­pe­cif­ic T cell en­gagers. The goal is to test com­bi­na­tions with RAS and EGFR in­hibitors, like Tagris­so, Neel said.

The biotech will like­ly start by test­ing the drug in com­bi­na­tion with ap­proved KRAS G12C in­hibitors, of which there are two: Am­gen’s Lumakras and Mi­rati Ther­a­peu­tics’ Kraza­ti, which was green­lit in De­cem­ber 2022.

The sci­en­tist who kicked off the race to­ward a KRAS drug, Ke­van Shokat at UCSF, is al­so on the hunt to make them more pow­er­ful by cre­at­ing bis­pe­cif­ic T cell en­gagers bound by the KRAS G12C in­hibitors. He and col­leagues are al­so go­ing af­ter hap­tens, small mol­e­cules that hope­ful­ly spark an im­mune re­sponse when at­tached to a larg­er pro­tein, and their biotech is apt­ly named Hap10 Bio.

“The fact that a dis­tin­guished team from UCSF has al­so come to the same broad sci­en­tif­ic con­clu­sions as us, is val­i­dat­ing of this nov­el ap­proach,” Chopra told End­points in a fol­low-up email.

“Our an­ti­body on­ly binds to the so­tora­sib[Lumakras]–KRAS G12C pro­tein com­plex on the cell sur­face when it is part of an­oth­er spe­cial­ized com­plex, known as a ma­jor his­to­com­pat­i­bil­i­ty com­plex, or MHC,” Chopra said.

Those com­plex­es help in­form the im­mune sys­tem that what is be­ing dis­played is bad and that the dan­ger needs to be re­moved. Hap10 and Aethon are both go­ing af­ter the hap­ten-MHC com­plex.

Chopra told End­points that Aethon ex­pects to en­ter the clin­ic in 2025. It has re­cruit­ed a chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer who will be­gin in March. The CEO said an­oth­er ex­ec­u­tive is com­ing from BioN­Tech but de­clined to name the new hire. Al­so in the C-suite is act­ing CSO Paul Da Sil­va Jar­dine, an Ap­ple Tree ven­ture part­ner, a 25-year Pfiz­er vet­er­an who left in 2015 af­ter end­ing his stint as VP of car­dio­vas­cu­lar and meta­bol­ic re­search. He’s al­so the co-founder of Stat­en Biotech­nol­o­gy.

The biotech is in “on­go­ing dis­cus­sions” about po­ten­tial part­ner­ships, Chopra said. Pri­or to join­ing Ap­ple Tree, he was a cor­po­rate VP of trans­la­tion­al re­search at Cel­gene.

Aethon comes from Greek mythol­o­gy. The biotech is named af­ter one of the hors­es that helped trans­port the char­i­ot of He­lios, god of the sun, Chopra said. There’s al­so Aetho­nan, a breed of winged horse, which the CEO analo­gized to the hy­brid plat­form his com­pa­ny is de­vel­op­ing.

Neel’s daugh­ter is a clas­sics pro­fes­sor. “I get free ad­vice from her,” he said.

Ed­i­tor’s note: This sto­ry was up­dat­ed to clar­i­fy ATP and NYU are not the sole in­vestors in the $30 mil­lion Se­ries A, and that Hap10 Bio is al­so go­ing af­ter the hap­ten-MHC com­plex. 

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Roger Perl­mut­ter lines up deals, fresh fund­ing at Eikon; Sec­ond RSV vac­cine ap­proved; Sev­er­al biotechs flash­ing red; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

As you come back to our website this weekend for ASCO news, don’t forget to check out our updated event lineup at BIO, which will cover everything from the current state of VC investing in biotech to top pharma R&D chiefs discussing how to make pipeline decisions.

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Roger Perlmutter, Eikon Therapeutics CEO

Roger Perl­mut­ter builds Eikon's pipeline with deal-mak­ing flur­ry, rais­ing $106M more

Eikon Therapeutics announced three business development deals on Thursday, effectively dropping in a pipeline of cancer drugs alongside more than $100 million in fresh funding.

The Hayward, CA-based company has become one of biotech’s richest startups since its 2019 founding, having raised nearly $775 million. It’s developing a massive, automated research approach built around Nobel Prize-winning microscope science to peer inside cells and watch proteins in action. After its Series B last year, PitchBook reported a $3.02 billion valuation. And while CEO Roger Perlmutter declined to comment on that figure, he said its first tranche of nearly $106 million in Series C funding is a “meaningful step-up to our Series B valuation.”

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Grail’s blood test charts path for di­ag­nos­ing pa­tients sus­pect­ed of hav­ing can­cer in large study: #AS­CO23

Grail’s vision is simple but bold. The blood testing company has long held that people are often diagnosed with cancer too late. If seemingly healthy people were screened for early signs of the disease before symptoms appear, they may be able to get more effective treatments that nip cancer in the bud.

That premise is the basis of Grail’s commercial blood test, Galleri, which searches for the genetic fingerprints of cancer in the blood. The test, launched in 2021, reaped $55 million in sales last year, but now the company is setting its sights on a new market: patients suspected of having cancer due to symptoms such as abdominal pain, rectal bleeding or unexplained weight loss. Rather than administering expensive scans or conducting invasive biopsies right away, Grail hopes doctors will consider a simple blood test.

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Bala Venkataraman, Avego founder and managing partner (L), and Bruno Paquin, AtomVie CEO

Cana­di­an CD­MO se­cures more fund­ing to get its man­u­fac­tur­ing site up and run­ning

AtomVie Global Radiopharma Inc, a Canadian radiopharmaceutical contract manufacturer, has received additional funds to get its manufacturing facility up and running.

The manufacturer announced that it has raised an additional 90 million Canadian dollars ($66.9 million) in a “Tranche 2 Series A round,” led by the healthcare investment firm Avego Management. The company previously announced a $40 million Series A round last year, which contributed to the construction of a new 64,000-square-foot facility.

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GSK pro­motes rou­tine im­mu­niza­tions for adults amid post-pan­dem­ic vac­cine back­slide

GSK launched a new initiative on Thursday and committed up to $1 million in grant funding to improve adult routine vaccination rates.

While the pandemic spotlight was trained on the race for novel Covid-19 vaccines, other routine vaccination rates plummeted, raising concerns that missed doses may put children and even some adults at risk of preventable diseases such as measles or shingles. The World Health Organization last year reported the largest drop in childhood vaccinations in roughly three decades.

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Tammie Denyse speaks up about Black women and breast cancer inequity in Gilead's first TikTok campaign. (Gilead Sciences)

Gilead joins Tik­Tok with on­col­o­gy aware­ness cam­paign fea­tur­ing di­verse group of can­cer ad­vo­cates

Gilead Sciences is taking over the opening page on TikTok for the next two weeks. A Gilead-sponsored video, featuring cancer advocates talking about equity and other issues, will show up as the landing page, called the “For You” page, for millions of TikTok watchers.

The cancer awareness campaign will begin on Monday and run for two weeks, a Gilead spokesperson told Endpoints News. The TikTok ad debut is timed around the ASCO medical conference, but the work is aimed more broadly at healthcare professionals, as well as people touched by cancer and people interested in advancing Black and general health equity.

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Dol­lars flow with three new pub­lic of­fer­ings, two pri­vate place­ments

A handful of biotechs announced plans to raise money this week.

First up is Hookipa Pharma, which announced Wednesday night that it is looking to raise $50 million in gross earnings in a public offering — by selling 22.9 million shares of common stock at $1.31 a share. The biotech, which is developing immuno-oncology treatments and infectious disease programs, is also offering roughly 15,000 shares of non-voting preferred stock, which could be converted into 1,000 shares of common stock for a price of $1,310 each.

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Stephen MacMillan, Hologic CEO (Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Il­lu­mi­na names Ho­log­ic CEO as new board mem­ber and chair

Illumina’s board appointed two new members, including Hologic CEO Stephen MacMillan as the non-executive chair, a move that followed a proxy fight that saw shareholders oust the company’s board chair.

The DNA sequencing company also appointed Scott Ullem, the CFO of Edwards Lifesciences, to the board, according to a company statement.

Illumina’s plans to add two new board members came as Carl Icahn waged a board proxy campaign culminating with shareholders electing his candidate, Andrew Teno, over board chair John Thompson. Illumina CEO Francis deSouza survived a threat to his board seat by securing more than twice the shareholder votes than his challenger. Another Illumina candidate, Robert Epstein, was also elected and remained on the board.

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