Al­tru­Bio got a makeover, and now it’s ready for its close­up.

CEO Judy Chou took over last Jan­u­ary — when the biotech was still known as AbGe­momics — on a mis­sion to re­build and re­brand. She culled the com­pa­ny’s on­col­o­gy pro­gram to laser in on an old im­munol­o­gy can­di­date. Now with a new board, a new name and new cash, the com­pa­ny has its eyes set on a piv­otal study.

On Thurs­day, Al­tru­Bio un­veiled a $63 mil­lion Se­ries A round to fund its trans­for­ma­tion. Its lead can­di­date, nei­hulizum­ab (al­so known as AbGn-168H), is an im­mune check­point reg­u­la­tor tar­get­ing PS­GL-1, a gly­co­pro­tein found on white blood cells and en­dothe­lial cells. Ear­li­er this month, the Phase Ib can­di­date nabbed FDA fast track des­ig­na­tion in steroid re­frac­to­ry acute graft-ver­sus-host dis­ease (SR-aGVHD).

Af­ter tak­ing the helm, Chou de­cid­ed to put the com­pa­ny’s GI can­cer can­di­date AbGn-107 on the shelf to fo­cus main­ly on nei­hulizum­ab. The com­pa­ny read out Phase Ia re­sults for AbGn-107 at AS­CO 2020, which sug­gest­ed the can­di­date was “well tol­er­at­ed with pre­lim­i­nary signs of ef­fi­ca­cy.” Five of 35 pa­tients treat­ed ex­pe­ri­enced Grade 3 or 4 neu­trope­nia, all at high­er dose lev­els, with 1 episode of febrile neu­trope­nia, ac­cord­ing to the re­sults. And two pa­tients ex­pe­ri­enced sta­ble dis­ease last­ing longer than 6 months.

“I don’t want to spend an­oth­er 20 years to get the prod­uct to the mar­ket so I need to be very con­cen­trat­ed on what we can de­liv­er and get it to the fin­ish line soon­er,” she said.

Un­der for­mer CEO and founder Rong-Hwa Lin, AbGe­nomics had been de­vel­op­ing nei­hulizum­ab for pso­ri­a­sis and oth­er im­muno­log­i­cal dis­eases. Boehringer In­gel­heim struck a col­lab­o­ra­tion deal around the can­di­date in 2005, then re­turned the rights in 2011. Al­tru­Bio how­ev­er, is still col­lab­o­rat­ing with BI on man­u­fac­tur­ing, Chou said.

“While we will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op AbGn-168H for pso­ri­a­sis, re­gain­ing the glob­al rights will al­so per­mit us to con­sid­er oth­er in­di­ca­tions that will take ad­van­tage of the full ther­a­peu­tic po­ten­tial of this drug,” Lin said at the time.

He passed the torch to Chou last Jan­u­ary, then stuck around as CSO be­fore re­tir­ing in Oc­to­ber. Be­fore Al­tru­Bio, Chou was glob­al head of biotech at Bay­er.

Chou says the com­pa­ny is no longer go­ing for in­di­ca­tions in pso­ri­a­sis or pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis, “pure­ly be­cause of mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion.” The can­di­date is cur­rent­ly in a Phase Ib study for SR-aGVHD, and Chou ex­pects to read out the da­ta in Q1 or Q2 of next year. She said the team is plan­ning to meet with reg­u­la­tors in the hopes of jump­ing right in­to a piv­otal study.

Al­tru­Bio’s lead pre­clin­i­cal can­di­date, leiolizum­ab (AbGn-268), has demon­strat­ed high­er po­ten­cy than nei­hulizum­ab, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny. Chou hopes to en­ter that can­di­date in the clin­ic around Q2 next year.

aMoon led the Se­ries A round, along with BVF Part­ners, CAM Cap­i­tal and oth­er ex­ist­ing in­vestors.

The com­pa­ny’s new board of di­rec­tors is chaired by Patrick Yang, who was most re­cent­ly ex­ec­u­tive VP at Juno Ther­a­peu­tics, but pre­vi­ous­ly served as Roche’s Glob­al Head of Tech­ni­cal Op­er­a­tions. The board al­so in­cludes Ole­ma On­col­o­gy CEO Sean Bo­hen, Genen­tech vet Stephen Juels­gaard, for­mer Cast­light Health CEO John Doyle, aMoon part­ner Gur Rosh­walb, and Cel­gene and Juno alum Corsee Sanders.

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