Af­ter pi­lot project, Take­da inks $500M pact to tap in­to a Ke­van Shokat pro­tégé's co­va­lent small mol­e­cule fish­ing plat­form

As new tech­nolo­gies open up new av­enues to­ward tar­gets wide­ly con­sid­ered un­drug­gable by small mol­e­cules, Take­da is tak­ing a chance on a low-pro­file drug dis­cov­ery play­er with promis­es of up to $500 mil­lion in biobucks.

Ping Cao

Over the next two years, Sun­ny­vale, CA-based Brid­Gene will de­ploy its chem­i­cal pro­teomics-based plat­form for five pro­grams against tar­gets of in­ter­est, start­ing with one im­pli­cat­ed in neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.

It all start­ed, ac­cord­ing to Brid­Gene CEO Ping Cao, with an in-per­son meet­ing at JP Mor­gan last Jan­u­ary.

“If you talk to a chemist or sci­en­tist in a large firm, they al­ways say we are tar­get hun­gry,” he said.

Cao, who spent enough years at Am­gen’s San Fran­cis­co site to be ap­proach­ing lif­er sta­tus, knew the is­sue well. With the low-hang­ing fruit al­ready picked, re­main­ing dis­ease-caus­ing pro­teins of­ten have pock­ets that are ei­ther too shal­low (think KRAS) or tran­sient, pre­sent­ing them­selves on­ly in live cells (think tran­scrip­tion fac­tor).

Take­da was no dif­fer­ent. The phar­ma gi­ant has a large phe­no­typ­ic screen­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Japan where sci­en­tists iden­ti­fy phe­no­typ­ic changes caused by mol­e­cules in their li­brary, but there’s a ma­jor hur­dle in fig­ur­ing out what ex­act­ly caused the change. Once Cao pre­sent­ed their tech­nol­o­gy, it took lit­tle time to kick­start a pi­lot project in which Take­da hand­ed over some of their clin­i­cal can­di­dates for Brid­Gene to pro­file.

“We use co­va­lent small mol­e­cules as a bait,” he said. “So we fish in­side live cells. So live cells are like an ocean; each pro­tein is just like a fish there. Dif­fer­ent small mol­e­cules, they will fish out dif­fer­ent tar­gets or dif­fer­ent pro­teins.”

Chao Zhang

The core tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise came from sci­en­tif­ic founder Chao Zhang’s lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Hav­ing trained with Ke­van Shokat, the in­ven­tor of one of the ear­li­est KRAS G12C in­hibitors, Zhang came up with his own method of min­ing co­va­lent ki­nase in­hibitors, col­lab­o­rat­ing with Prin­cip­ia co-founder Jack Taunton along the way. That com­pa­ny, which boasts of BTK in­hibitors, sold to Sanofi for $3.7 bil­lion. Shokat, mean­while, is on the sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­so­ry board.

From March to Sep­tem­ber, Brid­Gene’s team of 10 put sev­er­al Take­da can­cer drugs through its plat­form and came up with a re­port de­tail­ing how many pro­teins bound to those small mol­e­cules — some pre­vi­ous­ly un­known to the phar­ma part­ner.

“Take­da was re­al­ly hap­py with the re­sults be­cause this re­port helped them to — they can de­cide if they want to pur­sue oth­er in­di­ca­tions that cov­er oth­er tar­gets they didn’t know be­fore,” he said. “It al­so gave them (a) broad full view of the po­ten­tial tox­i­c­i­ty con­cerns down the road.”

It paved the way for the cur­rent col­lab­o­ra­tion, Cao said, which takes the same tech­nol­o­gy in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion. The biotech will be tasked with iden­ti­fy­ing new tar­gets that are re­spon­si­ble for a spe­cif­ic dis­ease phe­no­type that Take­da pin­points as un­der­ly­ing a neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tion, or oth­er ail­ments in the fu­ture phas­es of the pact.

The undis­closed up­front cash, added to a pre-A round they’ve raised, would help fund Brid­Gene’s in­ter­nal pipeline of on­col­o­gy pro­grams, Cao added.

For Take­da, the al­liance marks the lat­est in a dis­cov­ery deal spree cov­er­ing every­thing from RNA-bind­ing small mol­e­cules and ri­bo­some drug test­ing ma­chines to CRISPR-screened cell ther­a­pies and LNP gene de­liv­ery.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

Clay Siegall, Morphimmune CEO

Up­dat­ed: Ex-Seagen chief Clay Sie­gall emerges as CEO of pri­vate biotech

Clay Siegall will be back in the CEO seat, taking the helm of a private startup working on targeted cancer therapies.

It’s been almost a year since Siegall resigned from Seagen, the biotech he co-founded and led for more than 20 years, in the wake of domestic violence allegations by his then-wife. His eventual successor, David Epstein, sold the company to Pfizer in a $43 billion deal unveiled last week.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

No­vo Nordisk oral semaglu­tide tri­al shows re­duc­tion in blood sug­ar, plus weight loss

Novo Nordisk is testing higher levels of its oral version of its GLP-1, semaglutide, and its type 2 diabetes trial results released today show reductions in blood sugar as well as weight loss.

In the Phase IIIb trial, Novo compared its oral semaglutide in 25 mg and 50 mg doses with the 14 mg version that’s currently the maximum approved dose. The trial looked at how the doses compared when added to a stable dose of one to three oral antidiabetic medicines in people with type 2 diabetes who were in need of an intensified treatment.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Ly­me vac­cine test com­ple­tion is pushed back by a year as Pfiz­er, Val­ne­va say they'll ad­just tri­al

Valneva and Pfizer have adjusted the end date for the Phase III study of their investigational Lyme disease vaccine, pushing it back by a year after issues at a contract researcher led to thousands of US patients being dropped from the test.

In a March 20 update to clinicaltrials.gov, Valneva and Pfizer moved the primary completion date on the trial, called VALOR, from the end of 2024 to the end of 2025.

Endpoints Premium

Premium subscription required

Unlock this article along with other benefits by subscribing to one of our paid plans.

Stuart Peltz, former PTC Therapeutics CEO

Stu­art Peltz re­signs as PTC Ther­a­peu­tics CEO af­ter 25 years

Stuart Peltz, the longtime CEO of PTC Therapeutics who’s led the rare disease drug developer since its founding 25 years ago, is stepping down.

Succeeding him in the top job is Matthew Klein, who joined PTC in 2019 and was promoted to chief operating officer in 2022. In a call with analysts, he said the CEO transition has been planned for “quite some time” — in fact, as part of it, he gave the company’s presentation at the JP Morgan healthcare conference earlier this year.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Bet­ter Ther­a­peu­tics cuts 35% of staff while await­ing dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic ap­proval

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.

FDA spells out how can­cer drug de­vel­op­ers can use one tri­al for both ac­cel­er­at­ed and full ap­provals

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

Geoff McDonough, Generation Bio president and CEO

Mod­er­na part­ners on non-vi­ral gene ther­a­py with Gen­er­a­tion Bio af­ter swing­ing gene edit­ing deals

Moderna has inked a five-year partnership with gene therapy biotech Generation Bio, it announced Thursday morning, wading deeper into the genetic medicines space as it navigates beyond its vaccine work.

Moderna will pay Generation Bio $40 million upfront and invest another $36 million into the gene therapy biotech. In exchange, Moderna can license Generation Bio’s non-viral gene therapy platforms for two immune cell programs and two liver programs, with an option for a fifth program. Moderna will fund all the research work under the partnership, and could be on the hook for milestone, fee and royalty payments totaling up to $1.8 billion, a company spokesperson tells Endpoints News.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.

Steven James, Pionyr Immunotherapeutics CEO

Gilead pass­es on ful­ly ac­quir­ing Pi­o­nyr, as eyes now turn to Tizona, a fel­low sum­mer 2020 buy­out op­tion

Gilead and Pionyr Immunotherapeutics, a biotech trying to follow up on the first generation of checkpoint inhibitors, have “mutually agreed” on a rewrite to their 2020 terms, with Gilead deciding not to buy out the company.

The California biopharma waived its option to acquire the remaining 50.1% of Pionyr, which would have triggered a $315 million upfront payment and up to $1.15 billion down the road. Had Gilead waited to decide, the drugmaker would have had a potential payment to make in the near term under their agreement, a spokesperson said in an email to Endpoints News.

Endpoints News

Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription

Unlock this story instantly and join 163,600+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free.