Bain leads big $70M round as Aptinyx plunges deep­er in­to NM­DA work

Two years af­ter Aptinyx spun out of Nau­rex in the wake of Al­ler­gan’s $560 mil­lion buy­out, the biotech is much fur­ther along in the pipeline than your av­er­age fledg­ling. It just tacked on a hefty $70 mil­lion B round to beef up the work and dri­ve deep­er to­ward a piv­otal phase of de­vel­op­ment. And the new kid on the VC block, Bain Cap­i­tal Life Sci­ences, jumped out to lead the round, with man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Adam Kop­pel join­ing the board.

Nor­bert Riedel

The biotech didn’t ex­act­ly have to have that kind of mon­ey right now, says CEO Nor­bert Riedel, but when you’re look­ing to keep your op­tions open for every even­tu­al­i­ty — in­clud­ing a po­ten­tial IPO — a mez­za­nine round like this can make a lot of sense.

“We de­cid­ed to do this round to re­main in a re­al­ly, re­al­ly strong po­si­tion,” says Riedel, who’s stayed in touch pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly as he ex­plores find­ing just the right way to mod­u­late NM­DA re­cep­tors for a va­ri­ety of dis­eases.

Al­ler­gan bagged the group’s work on de­pres­sion, avid to leap in­to a late-stage study with an NM­DA drug that’s promi­nent in their Phase III pipeline. And Al­ler­gan was fine with leav­ing the rest of Nau­rex’s ex­per­i­men­tal work in the hands of the team that had brought it along. The break­away biotech is still fo­cused on NM­DA, but the lead pro­gram for NYX-2925 is in a Phase II for neu­ropa­thy pain with some ex­plorato­ry work un­der­way in fi­bromyal­gia. Next there’s a Phase I for NYX-783 in PTSD and a pre­clin­i­cal pro­gram mov­ing to­ward its first hu­man study.

“Now we can con­tin­ue to de­vel­op our pipeline un­til the end of 2019, about 2 years,” says the CEO. And that should give them time to col­lect Phase II da­ta on the two lead drugs and make some key de­ci­sions about when to launch Phase III, if all goes ac­cord­ing to plan.

Adam Kop­pel

Bain was a good fit for the lead on this round, which at­tract­ed a big group of in­vestors fol­low­ing the $65 mil­lion launch round. Ricky Sun played a big part in this, right along with Kop­pel. Both are Bio­gen vets, notes Riedel, and no strangers to CNS re­search.

Why not do an IPO now, with the win­dow open?

Riedel isn’t ex­clud­ing that op­tion for 2018, but he felt now was the right time to make sure the com­pa­ny was well fi­nanced. Part­ner­ships, IPOs and fur­ther fi­nanc­ings can all be stud­ied at a mea­sured pace.

“I think we’re in no rush,” Kop­pel tells me. “This is one we’re go­ing to be pa­tient with.”

What does Kop­pel see as his main role?

Play­ing a key role in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the crossovers and pub­lic in­vestors dur­ing a tran­si­tion to fo­cus on the “longterm in­vestor with fun­da­men­tal val­ue cre­ation, not just the next step.”

If the time is right for an IPO in late 2018 or ear­ly 2019, they may go for it, he says. In the mean­time, he counts him­self as a big fan of Riedel and the whole team at Aptinyx.

Here’s the rest of the syn­di­cate:

New in­vestors with Bain in­clude Adage Cap­i­tal, Agent Cap­i­tal, HBM Health­care In­vest­ments, Nan Fung Life Sci­ences, Part­ner Fund Man­age­ment, and Rock Springs Cap­i­tal. Ex­ist­ing in­vestors al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Se­ries B round, in­clud­ing New Leaf Ven­ture Part­ners, Fra­zier Health­care Part­ners, Lon­gi­tude Cap­i­tal, Os­age Uni­ver­si­ty Part­ners, Adams Street Part­ners, LVP Life Sci­ence Ven­tures, Patho­Cap­i­tal, Goudy Park Cap­i­tal, Beeck­en Pet­ty O’Keefe & Com­pa­ny, and North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.

 

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End­points 20(+2) un­der 40, 2023; Bio­phar­ma's high­est-paid CEOs; N-of-1 CRISPR sto­ry goes on af­ter tragedy; 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.

We will be off Monday in observance of Memorial Day — and when we get back, it will be a straight march to ASCO, BIO and more. Enjoy the (long) weekend!

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Athena Countouriotis, Avenzo Therapeutics CEO (website via Nasdaq)

Ex-Turn­ing Point ex­ecs plan to have their next bet, Aven­zo, on the Nas­daq next sum­mer

The crew at Turning Point Therapeutics is back together for a new biotech that wants to acquire early-stage oncology small molecules, including antibody drug conjugates, and potentially form partnerships with China-based drug developers for ex-China rights as it eyes a speedy leap onto the Nasdaq around this time next year, CEO Athena Countouriotis told Endpoints News.

After selling Turning Point to Bristol Myers Squibb, announced at the onset of last year’s ASCO confab, she and colleague Mohammad Hirmand founded Avenzo Therapeutics. The CEO and CMO already have approximately $200 million in seed and Series A financing from five big-name investors to evaluate which drugs to bring into its pipeline. That includes SR One, OrbiMed, Foresite Capital, Citadel’s Surveyor Capital and Lilly Asia Ventures. Bidding wars for assets have led Avenzo to miss out on some deals in recent months, but the biotech has three active term sheets and hopes to bring in its first asset in the third quarter, Countouriotis said in a Friday morning interview.

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Rich Horgan (R) with his late brother, Terry

Rich Hor­gan spear­head­ed a gene ther­a­py for his broth­er. The tri­al end­ed in tragedy, but the work con­tin­ues for more pa­tients

Rich Horgan’s quest to create a custom gene therapy for his brother, Terry, ended in tragedy. But Horgan doesn’t believe it’s the end of the story.

Terry, a 27-year-old patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last October just eight days after receiving the therapy in a clinical trial in which he was the only participant. The case raised questions about the safety of certain gene therapies and what would happen to other drug programs under a nonprofit that Horgan created, called Cure Rare Disease.

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Bio­phar­ma's 20 high­est-paid CEOs of 2022, each bring­ing in $20M+ pay­days

Even in a down year for much of the biopharma market, 20 CEOs brought in pay packages valued at more than $20 million, an Endpoints News analysis found.

Endpoints collected data on more than 350 CEO compensation packages, covering a wide range of pharma, biotech, and life sciences companies. All told, the 20 largest earners made over $725 million in 2022 — an average package of $36.4 million. Three brought in paydays over $50 million, and one CEO broke the $100 million mark.

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Douglas Love, Annexon CEO

An­nex­on’s GA drug miss­es on pri­ma­ry goal but win on vi­su­al acu­ity will be fo­cus of planned late-stage tri­al

Annexon’s complement inhibitor didn’t prove better than sham at reducing lesion growth in a leading cause of blindness, but the biotech still plans to move forward on the back of secondary endpoints showing visual acuity preservation, which will “certainly” be the primary goal in a late-stage trial to be discussed shortly with the FDA, CEO Douglas Love told Endpoints News. 

The California biotech’s ANX007 was not statistically significant compared to pooled sham, the comparator, at 12 months in patients with geographic atrophy, per a Wednesday presentation. In every-month dosing, the GA lesion area changed about 6.2% from baseline (p=0.526) and 1.3% (p=0.896) in the every-other-month group. In a March note, Jefferies analyst Suji Jeong said a reduction of 20% to 30% would be “encouraging.”

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The 20(+2) un­der 40: Your guide to the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech lead­ers

This year’s list of 20 biotech leaders under the age of 40 includes a huge range of ambitions. Some of our honorees are planning to create the next big drug giant. Others are pushing the bounds of AI. One is working to revolutionize TB testing. All are compelling talents who are still young in age, but already far along in achievement.

And, as in years past, we went over. The 20 are actually 22 because of two double profiles that reflect how important teamwork is in the industry. As one of our honorees, Joe Illingworth of DJS Antibodies, told me in our interview, “It takes a village to raise a biotech.”

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FDA ap­proves Lex­i­con’s heart-fail­ure drug af­ter de­feat in di­a­betes

The FDA on Friday approved Lexicon’s heart failure drug sotagliflozin following a string of setbacks for the pharma company, including an FDA rejection in diabetes and the loss of a development deal with Sanofi.

The dual SGLT1 and SGLT2 inhibitor will be marketed as Inpefa and is a once-daily tablet. It’s been approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure-related hospitalization or urgent visits in adults with heart failure or type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and other cardiovascular risk factors. The label spans the range of left ventricular ejection fraction, including preserved ejection fraction and reduced ejection fraction, as well as patients with or without diabetes, Lexicon said Friday.

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Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion to re­ceive few­er Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine dos­es un­der amend­ed con­tract

The European Commission has made a few changes to its vaccine contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, reducing the dose volume while extending the delivery timeline to cope with “evolving public health needs.”

The Commission previously struck a contract in May 2021 for 900 million doses, with the option to purchase another 900 million. Of those, 450 million were expected to be delivered in 2023, though an amendment now calls for fewer doses. While neither the Commission nor Pfizer and BioNTech have revealed an exact amount, an unnamed source told Reuters that the amendment reduces the remaining expected doses by about a third.

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