Af­ter rais­ing $100M, Google-backed Evelo looks to blaze a new trail with mon­o­clon­al mi­cro­bials

Sim­ba Gill has al­ways want­ed, in his own words, “to build one great, ful­ly-in­te­grat­ed biotech com­pa­ny.”

And now he’s tak­ing his shot with Evelo Bio­sciences.

To­day, Gill and his crew of 50 are tak­ing the wraps off a $50 mil­lion in­vest­ment round, which brings the to­tal raised so far to $100 mil­lion. That’s enough mon­ey for Evelo — an ear­ly-stage com­bi­na­tion of two fledg­lings in­cu­bat­ed by Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing that were both tack­ling the same ob­jec­tive from op­po­site ends of the dis­ease spec­trum — to take a gi­ant step in­to the clin­ic with a slate of at least five pro­grams that will each look to demon­strate that a par­tic­u­lar mi­cro­bial strain can act to ac­cel­er­ate or brake an im­mune sys­tem at­tack.

It starts with can­cer, look­ing to open a new chap­ter in im­muno-on­col­o­gy that can fol­low the check­point pi­o­neers. And it goes off in­to a va­ri­ety of au­toim­mune con­di­tions and dis­ease types that Gill un­abashed­ly be­lieves will lay the ground­work for a rad­i­cal new ap­proach to drug de­vel­op­ment.

Flag­ship founder and CEO Noubar Afeyan

Any­one fa­mil­iar with Mod­er­na and the way Flag­ship’s Noubar Afeyan is build­ing com­pa­nies will rec­og­nize the mod­el in­stant­ly. The goal here is to pro­vide enough cash to prove a new plat­form tech can work pro­duc­ing key proof-of-con­cept da­ta.

“It’s re­al­ly start­ing to bear fruit,” says Kr­ish­na Yesh­want, the gen­er­al part­ner at GV — for­mer­ly Google Ven­tures — who is deeply im­pressed with Evelo’s pre­clin­i­cal ev­i­dence to back up the ther­a­peu­tic ef­fect of spe­cif­ic strains of gut mi­crobes – a far cry from the rather “vague” da­ta he’s seen be­hind the first wave of mi­cro­bio­me com­pa­nies in the clin­ic.

Kr­ish­na Yesh­want, GV

Make no mis­take, Gill and Yesh­want and all the back­ers are wait­ing to see what comes from the first wave of mi­cro­bio­me com­pa­nies in the clin­ic. But they clear­ly be­lieve that they’ve now reached the thresh­old where they can start to dis­tin­guish what they are af­ter com­pared to the ear­ly pi­o­neers in gut bi­ol­o­gy. Join­ing GV, Flag­ship and Cel­gene Ven­tures are the Mayo Clin­ic, al­ready strate­gi­cal­ly aligned with Evelo on the work, and Alexan­dria Ven­ture In­vest­ments.

“It is un­be­liev­ably clear that check­point in­hibitors are go­ing to be come se­mi-com­modi­tized,” Gill tells me about the first and sec­ond and third wave of PD-(L)1 in­hibitors now break­ing in­to the mar­ket. By tak­ing the lead on mon­o­clon­al mi­cro­bials in the gut, Evelo be­lieves it can clear­ly dis­tin­guish its own work while map­ping out an ear­ly-leader ad­van­tage in a brand new are­na of im­muno-on­col­o­gy.

It is, he adds, “at least as broad­ly ap­plic­a­ble as mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies and po­ten­tial­ly much broad­er.”

Those are bold words, and Gill says he’s ready to start back­ing it up with hard hu­man da­ta, look­ing for an ear­ly lead in on­col­o­gy and quick­ly ex­pand­ing the scope with drugs that tar­get im­muno-in­flam­ma­to­ry con­di­tions. Can­cer, he says, is an ob­vi­ous pick, but Gill and Evelo are keep­ing mum on their first shorts in au­toim­mune and au­to-in­flam­ma­to­ry con­di­tions  — for now.

“Our goal is for every sin­gle can­cer pa­tient to get a mon­o­clon­al mi­cro­bial,” says Gill. Along the way, he’s al­so ex­pect­ing some ma­jor col­lab­o­ra­tions with bio­phar­ma part­ners to fol­low.

Gill and his grow­ing crew still need to prove that what they are do­ing will work in hu­mans, as it has in mouse stud­ies, but they’re bet­ting $100 mil­lion that what they’ve seen so far proves it can be big.

It’s a big gam­ble, and one that Gill clear­ly rel­ish­es.

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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Bris­tol My­er­s' Op­di­vo keeps can­cer at bay in more lym­phoma pa­tients than Seagen's Ad­cetris in PhI­II: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — In a study pitting Seagen’s Adcetris against Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo in newly diagnosed patients with advanced classic Hodgkin lymphoma, a greater proportion of those who received Opdivo saw no cancer growth at one year compared to those who got Adcetris.

In addition, patients in the Opdivo arm of the Phase III trial reported reduced toxicities, according to lead investigator Alex Herrera, a hematologist-oncologist at City of Hope’s cancer cancer in Duarte, CA. Notably, the trial included more than 200 children across both arms. Generally, more than half of children with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma receive radiation therapy, but in this trial, dubbed SWOG S1826, only a handful of patients in the two arms received radiotherapy, sparing many children from long-term side effects of radiation.

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Full TIG­IT da­ta from Gilead, Ar­cus show low­er PFS rates than De­cem­ber read­out: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Gilead and Arcus unveiled a fuller snapshot of a Phase II study testing their experimental cancer immunotherapy combo that showed lower progression-free survival rates than its previous update, results that are likely to spark further debate over the closely-watched clinical trial.

Last December, the anti-TIGIT/anti-PD-L1 combo, positioned as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, recorded data that drew mixed reactions. The latest analysis, presented Saturday afternoon at ASCO, included only a handful more patients than the previous update, but PFS rates fell — in one cohort by nearly three months.

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Servi­er’s vo­rasi­denib stalls pro­gres­sion of brain can­cer by 61% in piv­otal PhI­II IN­DI­GO study: #AS­CO23

An experimental pill from Servier Pharmaceuticals showed potentially practice-changing results in a narrow group of brain cancer patients, cutting the risk of their cancers progressing by 61%, according to a late-stage clinical trial.

The drug, vorasidenib, is a precision medicine that only works in certain people whose cancer carries mutations in one of two genes called IDH1/2. Doctors hope that the therapy will delay the need for chemotherapy or radiation, which are often used to combat relapses in patients who’ve previously undergone surgery to remove brain tumors.

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Take­da ax­es gene ther­a­py deal with Po­sei­da Ther­a­peu­tics amid broad­er re­think

Less than two years after Takeda inked a collaboration with Poseida Therapeutics to develop six liver-directed and hematopoietic stem cell-directed in vivo gene therapies, Takeda will end the partnership on July 30, the company confirmed to Endpoints News.

The breakup is not unexpected, coming on the heels of Takeda’s April announcement that it planned to stop discovery and preclinical work in AAV gene therapy, as well as research and preclinical work on rare hematology. A representative for Takeda confirmed that the partnership ended because of the company’s decision to stop that work.

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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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The Modulo Bio team with CEO Michael Horowitz (fourth from right in semicircle)

Ex­clu­sive: With $8M, neu­ro start­up Mod­u­lo Bio emerges to test small mol­e­cules for ALS, de­men­tia in CEO’s per­son­al mis­sion

Embarking on a personal mission after his best friend’s mother was diagnosed with a mutation-driven case of frontotemporal dementia, Michael Horowitz has pulled together $8 million in venture funding at Modulo Bio to create small molecules for neurodegenerative diseases.

The San Diego and Bay Area biotech will select its lead development candidate and some backup options within six months and then raise a Series A to investigate therapeutics for C9orf72 mutation-driven cases of ALS and frontotemporal dementia, Horowitz told Endpoints News.

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As­traZeneca tri­al shows mod­est ben­e­fit in ovar­i­an can­cer, but doc­tors say it's hard to ap­ply find­ings: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Adding AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi and Lynparza to the treatment regimen for patients with advanced ovarian cancer and no BRCA mutation extended progression-free survival (PFS) by five months, according to interim data released at the ASCO annual meeting Saturday morning.

However, the design of the Phase III study obscures how much Imfinzi is contributing to the PFS extension, doctors said, making it difficult to apply the findings to clinical practice.

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