Alex Leech, Alchemab CEO (SV Health Investors)

Alchemab bags fresh round of in­vestors for tar­get-ag­nos­tic an­ti­body de­vel­op­ment for Hunt­ing­ton's, Covid-19

Jane Os­bourn

With a “tar­get-ag­nos­tic” ap­proach to an­ti­body de­vel­op­ment, the UK’s Alchemab has used lessons learned from pa­tients with re­sis­tance to cer­tain dis­eases to chase af­ter con­di­tions as far apart as Hunt­ing­ton’s and Covid-19. Now, in­vestors are jump­ing on board the con­cept with an $86 mil­lion Se­ries A.

The pro­ceeds will go to­ward ad­vanc­ing the com­pa­ny’s tar­get-ag­nos­tic drug dis­cov­ery pro­gram, a re­lease said. That ap­proach looks at the an­ti­body reper­toires of pa­tients who show re­sis­tance to typ­i­cal­ly de­struc­tive dis­eases re­gard­less of ge­net­ic dis­po­si­tion.

In No­vem­ber, the com­pa­ny, whose sci­en­tists were led by CSO Jane Os­bourn, a for­mer As­traZeneca ex­ec­u­tive, joined a task force to de­vel­op an an­ti­body cock­tail for treat­ing Covid-19. That task force claimed to ac­cel­er­ate the time­line for an­ti­body dis­cov­ery from 18 months to 7 months, a path­way that could be ap­plied to fu­ture pan­demics that arise. Alchemab was joined by ION­TAS, LifeArc and Kymab, among oth­er com­pa­nies, ac­cord­ing to Busi­ness Week­ly.

In June, Os­bourn told  Busi­ness Week­ly that there was no rush to get to Se­ries A and said it would be ex­e­cut­ed “when the time is right” as the com­pa­ny had its sights set on glob­al ex­pan­sion. This fund­ing is a step in that di­rec­tion.

Olivia Cavlan

“Our am­bi­tion is to be one of the best…by a hav­ing re­al­ly unique ap­proach to iden­ti­fy­ing new tar­gets and drug­ging them,” head of busi­ness Olivia Cavlan told End­points. “At the mo­ment we have an in­cred­i­bly tal­ent­ed team, we’ve got in­di­vid­u­als ab­solute­ly at the top of their field and a fab­u­lous cul­ture, but the way that you stay on top of your game is by bring­ing new peo­ple in, be­ing in­ter­na­tion­al and un­der­stand­ing what is go­ing on glob­al­ly, so that’s what we need to do.”

Os­bourn has an ex­ten­sive back­ground in phe­no­typ­ic drug dis­cov­ery, and over the last cou­ple of years, the in­no­va­tions sur­round­ing bulk BCR-RNA se­quenc­ing com­bined with Alchemab’s an­a­lyt­i­cal and da­ta man­age­ment tools have been able to cre­ate a method of drug dis­cov­ery that Cavlan says is quite dif­fer­ent.

The com­pa­ny al­so col­lab­o­rates ex­ten­sive­ly with aca­d­e­mics and oth­er com­pa­nies. The com­pa­ny’s ap­proach has sup­port from Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty and Mount Sinai Hos­pi­tal. Its work is fo­cused on can­cer and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.

Alchemab boasts a team of about 30 peo­ple that is un­usu­al­ly more than 50% women, which Cavlan says plays an im­por­tant role in their suc­cess.

“It’s a team that’s learn­ing as we go, will­ing to fail, but every­one work­ing at the ab­solute top of their game,” she said.

Boston-based RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment led the round with in­volve­ment from Light­stone Ven­tures, Da­ta Col­lec­tive VC, DHVC, SV Health In­vestors and the De­men­tia Dis­cov­ery Fund.

On March 16, the com­pa­ny an­nounced that it was award­ed a grant from In­no­vate UK to sup­port an­ti­body ther­a­py for Hunt­ing­ton’s dis­ease, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Med­i­cines Dis­cov­ery Cat­a­pult. Be­fore re­ceiv­ing the fund­ing, sci­en­tists re­port­ed hav­ing iden­ti­fied a pan­el of an­ti­bod­ies with dis­ease-mod­i­fy­ing po­ten­tial. With that mon­ey, Alchemab will con­duct the first in-hu­man stud­ies of the treat­ment over the next 18 months. If suc­cess­ful, a treat­ment that slows or halts dis­ease pro­gres­sion could be the re­sult.

That study fea­tured col­lab­o­ra­tion from the CD­HI, which Cavlan said was cru­cial in iden­ti­fy­ing pa­tients that show re­silien­cy to the dis­ease.

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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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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Keytru­da be­fore and af­ter lung can­cer surgery cuts re­lapse risk by 42%, but doesn’t im­prove sur­vival: #AS­CO23

CHICAGO — Merck has found partial success with its latest effort to more aggressively treat earlier stages of lung cancer.

On Saturday the pharma giant announced results from a large trial in which patients received Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda plus chemotherapy before surgeons removed their tumors, followed by another course of Keytruda afterward.

The Phase III study, called KEYNOTE-671, enrolled 800 people with the early stages of the most common kind of lung cancer: non-small cell lung cancer, or NSCLC. Everyone got chemo before surgery, and half also got Keytruda before and after. At two years, 62.4% of those who got Keytruda kept their cancer at bay, compared to 40.6% who got a placebo.

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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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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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