Af­ter sell­ing to Genen­tech, the old Je­cure team is back at an RNA-fo­cused start­up — and more en­thu­si­as­tic than ever

When Genen­tech swooped in to buy NASH-fo­cused Je­cure Ther­a­peu­tics back in 2018, a hand­ful of the start­up’s ex­ec­u­tives weren’t quite ready to dis­perse.

It had been just three years since Je­cure launched with a pre­clin­i­cal port­fo­lio of NL­RP3 in­hibitors — and the takeover came soon­er than any­one, in­clud­ing CEO Jeff Stafford, had ex­pect­ed. So he got talk­ing with James Veal and Gretchen Bain, two se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neurs in charge of Je­cure’s R&D.

“We want­ed to do some­thing to­geth­er again,” Stafford told End­points News. “All of us share a high en­thu­si­asm for ear­ly stage drug dis­cov­ery, and had some ideas.”

Jeff Stafford

A year lat­er, they launched 858 Ther­a­peu­tics — named af­ter the San Diego area code — to fo­cus on the bur­geon­ing field of RNA mod­u­la­tion and the role it plays in can­cer. Right away, they snapped up Gotham Ther­a­peu­tics, a New York-based start­up that was cre­at­ing med­i­cines to drug key pro­teins that mod­u­late mR­NA, for an undis­closed amount.

And on Tues­day, they emerged from stealth mode with a $60 mil­lion Se­ries A round led by Ver­sant Ven­tures. NEA, Cor­morant As­set Man­age­ment and Lo­gos Cap­i­tal chipped in­to the round.

“We just found that space to be in­cred­i­bly dy­nam­ic where there have been, over the last few years, just a whole host of break­through dis­cov­er­ies,” Ver­sant part­ner Car­lo Riz­zu­to said.

Car­lo Riz­zu­to

While the in­dus­try was ini­tial­ly laser-fo­cused on mod­i­fy­ing DNA, ev­i­dence be­gan pil­ing up years ago that RNA mod­i­fi­ca­tions could help de­ter­mine to which de­gree genes are trans­lat­ed in­to pro­teins. The mod­i­fi­ca­tions play a big role in some can­cers — but un­til re­cent­ly, sci­en­tists have strug­gled to ad­dress those tar­gets due to a dearth of as­says and chal­lenges in cre­at­ing chem­i­cal mat­ter with drug-like prop­er­ties, Stafford said.

858’s plat­form re­volves around “spe­cial­ized know-how and spe­cial­ized as­says,” ac­cord­ing to Stafford. The Se­ries A mon­ey should be enough to get the team in­to the clin­ic by 2023 — but the CEO was care­ful not to dis­close the team’s tar­gets just yet. He says the com­pa­ny should be able to tack­le three to five pro­grams at a giv­en time.

Veal and Bain are on board as CSO and VP of bi­ol­o­gy, re­spec­tive­ly — the same roles they held at Je­cure. All three ex­ecs have ex­pe­ri­ence at Ver­sant-backed biotechs, in­clud­ing Quan­ti­cel and Ami­ra Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which were bought by Cel­gene and Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, re­spec­tive­ly.

Stafford says he’s look­ing to ex­pand the 25-per­son team to 40 in the next 18 months, with head­quar­ters in San Diego and op­er­a­tions in New York.

“(It’s) I think very rare in this busi­ness to get to work with the same team over mul­ti­ple suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies,” Riz­zu­to said. “There are not many, you know, three-times suc­cess­ful teams that are do­ing their fourth com­pa­ny and so I think that’s a very clear point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion.”

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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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, 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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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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