Canaan leaps in­to UK biotech by co-lead­ing $14M Se­ries A for im­muno-on­col­o­gy up­start Grey Wolf

Check­point in­hibitors have done won­ders for im­muno-on­col­o­gy, but the po­tent class of drugs doesn’t work across all can­cers. To rem­e­dy this, UK-based biotech up­start Grey Wolf Ther­a­peu­tics is work­ing on a fresh ap­proach that does not di­rect­ly tar­get the im­mune sys­tem, but in­stead al­ters tu­mor cells by il­lu­mi­nat­ing and prim­ing them for im­mune sys­tem an­ni­hi­la­tion — a strat­e­gy that could work in con­junc­tion with ex­ist­ing im­munother­a­pies.

An­dera Part­ners and Canaan have shown their faith in the con­cept by lead­ing an ap­prox­i­mate­ly $14 mil­lion se­ries A round for the com­pa­ny.

Pe­ter Joyce

Found­ed by for­mer Ver­tex ex­ec­u­tive Pe­ter Joyce and ex-chief of Spinifex Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals Tom Mc­Carthy, Grey Wolf is de­vel­op­ing small mol­e­cule mod­u­la­tors of en­do­plas­mic retic­u­lum aminopep­ti­das­es (ER­APs) pro­teins, an ap­proach de­signed to shore up the quan­ti­ty and range of neoanti­gens pre­sent­ed on tu­mor cells.

“The en­zyme tar­gets we’re go­ing af­ter are ER­AP1 and ER­AP2 — they work in the anti­gen pre­sen­ta­tion path­way and es­sen­tial­ly by mod­u­lat­ing their ac­tiv­i­ty, we can mod­u­late what is pre­sent­ed on the sur­face of a can­cer cell, so we ac­tu­al­ly change the neoanti­gens and mod­u­late their vis­i­bil­i­ty,” Joyce told End­points News, adding that pre­clin­i­cal da­ta sug­gests that a monother­a­py ap­proach is fea­si­ble, as is a com­bi­na­tion with ex­ist­ing PD-1s.

Grey Wolf is work­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford, Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton, and has a strate­gic part­ner­ship with Syg­na­ture Dis­cov­ery, a Not­ting­ham-based provider of drug dis­cov­ery and pre­clin­i­cal ser­vices. Syg­na­ture and Mc­Carthy to­geth­er put in £420,000 in seed fund­ing for Grey Wolf, Joyce said.

Back in 2015, Mc­Carthy was in charge of Spinifex when it was sold to Swiss drug­mak­er No­var­tis $NVS in a $700 mil­lion deal af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion of pos­i­tive Phase II da­ta on its non-opi­oid painkiller. Not­ed VC Canaan was an in­vestor in Spinifex.

Canaan has made its first-ever in­vest­ment in UK biotech with its Grey Wolf in­vest­ment, thanks in part to Mc­Carthy’s re­la­tion­ship with the firm, and due to the sci­en­tif­ic po­ten­tial of the ER­AP ap­proach, Joyce said. “(The) fact that we’re do­ing some­thing very nov­el re­al­ly piqued their in­ter­est.”

Ac­cord­ing to Joyce, out­side of aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions, there aren’t any oth­er com­mer­cial en­ti­ties look­ing at mod­u­lat­ing ER­AP pro­teins for im­muno-on­col­o­gy to his knowl­edge and Grey Wolf is “aim­ing to be first-in-class.”

The com­pa­ny, which has a core team of 6, is cur­rent­ly in the drug dis­cov­ery phase, and this round of fund­ing will be used to take the com­pa­ny to pre-IND en­abling stud­ies in the next 2-3 years. “We ei­ther ex­it at that point — which we would be open to — or get a part­ner. Or we might do a Se­ries B and take it to Phase I/II. I think be­yond…the com­plex­i­ty of im­muno-on­col­o­gy clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment re­al­ly then does need one of the big­ger part­ners,” Joyce said.

“I’m a fly fish­er­man by back­ground and Grey Wolf is a type of mayfly and it’s a bit of lucky fly for me…so I’m hop­ing it will be a sort of a good luck omen.”

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.

Alaa Halawaa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

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Flare Therapeutics biochemists Yong Li (L) and Valerie Vivat

A $123M Flare will get Third Rock on­col­o­gy biotech in­to the clin­ic this year

Flare Therapeutics will start its first human trial this year with an investigational urothelial cancer drug after pulling together a $123 million Series B from Big Pharmas, VCs and its incubator, Third Rock Ventures.

Launched in 2021 on the idea that a biotech could finally succeed at drugging the much-sought-after but stubborn transcription factor, Flare Therapeutics said Wednesday it is now primed for the clinic after closing its large financing haul earlier this year. The raise is a relatively stark figure in a tough startup financing environment but further buoys the upbeat signals coming out of other Third Rock biotechs in recent weeks, including the $200 million CARGO Therapeutics and $100 million Rapport Therapeutics rounds.

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'Band­ing to­geth­er': 50 fe­male biotech ex­ec­u­tives lay out plans for board di­ver­si­ty, new com­pa­nies and men­tor­ing founders

Earlier this month, during the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, Angie You recalled the speed with which female biotech CEOs were helping each other connect with bankers, get their wires through and assuage concerns during a financial implosion.

This past weekend, 50 of about 125 women who are part of that Slack group and a broader coalition self-dubbed the Biotech Sisterhood met in person in Cancun for the second rendition of an annual summit connecting female biotech CEOs. The attendance list doubled that of the inaugural gathering in Arizona 12 months ago.

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Francesco Marincola, newly-appointed Sonata Therapeutics CSO

Kite's head of re­search leaves for Flag­ship start­up Sonata

Another leader is departing Kite Pharma, and will to spend the “last part” of his career exploring how cancer evades the immune system.

Kite’s senior VP and global head of cell therapy research Francesco Marincola left the Gilead CAR-T unit last week for Sonata Therapeutics. Flagship last May unveiled the startup, which was pieced together from two fledgling biotechs Inzen and Cygnal Therapeutics. As CSO, Marincola will lead Sonata’s push to reprogram cancer cells to make them more immunogenic.

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Rohan Palekar, 89bio CEO

89bio’s PhII da­ta add to quick suc­ces­sion of NASH read­outs as field seeks turn­around

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

FDA in­di­cates will­ing­ness to ap­prove Bio­gen ALS drug de­spite failed PhI­II study

Ahead of Wednesday’s advisory committee hearing to discuss Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen, the FDA appeared open to approving the drug, newly released briefing documents show.

Citing the need for flexibility in a devastating disease like ALS, regulators signaled a willingness to consider greenlighting tofersen based on its effect on a certain protein associated with ALS despite a failed pivotal trial. The documents come after regulatory flexibility was part of the same rationale the agency expressed when approving an ALS drug last September from Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, indicating the FDA’s openness to approving new treatments for the disease.

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Roche and Lil­ly team up to de­vel­op blood test to de­tect ear­ly signs of Alzheimer's

Eli Lilly is teaming up with Roche to help develop a blood test to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and determine whether a patient should go for further confirmatory testing.

Roche’s Elecsys Amyloid Plasma Panel (EAPP) measures pTau 181 protein assay and APOE E4 assay in human blood plasma – elevations in pTau 181 are present in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, while the presence of APO E4 is the most common genetic risk factor for the disease.

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Josep Bassaganya-Riera, NImmune Biopharma

Ex­clu­sive: Af­ter get­ting his drug back, Lan­dos founder as­sem­bles new start­up for the big PhI­II test

By the time Josep Bassaganya-Riera stepped down as founding CEO of Landos Biopharma in 2021, the company had racked up Phase II data for its top autoimmune program, completed what he called a positive end-of-Phase-II meeting with the FDA and plans to launch pivotal Phase III trials.

Since then, though, the new leaders at Landos have reshuffled their plans for the drug, omilancor, first announcing they will run a Phase IIb ahead of a Phase III and eventually shelving it altogether.

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