The es­tro­gen re­cep­tor (ER) — which is in­hib­it­ed by tar­get­ed drugs such as the hor­mone ther­a­py ta­mox­ifen and aro­matase in­hibitors — is a tran­scrip­tion fac­tor im­pli­cat­ed in 75% of breast can­cers. Re­search from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty sug­gests that the DNA in­ter­ac­tions and tran­scrip­tion­al scope of ER re­ly on a pro­tein that plays a key role in de­ter­min­ing tu­mor growth and pro­gres­sion — even when re­sis­tance to ex­ist­ing drugs has built up.

Ja­son Car­roll Az­e­ria

Az­e­ria Ther­a­peu­tics — a com­pa­ny found­ed by Ja­son Car­roll from the Can­cer Re­search UK Cam­bridge In­sti­tute at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge who spear­head­ed the re­search — has now en­ticed Syn­cona and about $41.4 mil­lion in fund­ing to de­vel­op ther­a­pies for drug-re­sis­tant breast can­cer.

The com­pa­ny, which was spun out of Sixth El­e­ment Cap­i­tal and Can­cer Re­search UK’s com­mer­cial part­ner­ships team in 2017, is laser-fo­cused on pi­o­neer fac­tors — the pro­teins that dic­tate where in the genome tran­scrip­tion fac­tors as­so­ciate with DNA and what genes are reg­u­lat­ed.

Its lead pro­gram is tar­get­ing the pi­o­neer fac­tor FOXA1, which has shown to be in­stru­men­tal in the tu­mor de­vel­op­ment and main­te­nance of ER-pos­i­tive lu­mi­nal breast can­cer (typ­i­cal­ly 30% of these pa­tients progress to late-stage en­docrine-re­sis­tant dis­ease). FOXA1 is req­ui­site in all ER-DNA in­ter­ac­tions and in the ab­sence of FOXA1, ER does not li­aise with DNA, switch genes on or cause cells to grow. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, FOXA1 is al­so es­sen­tial for cells that have grown re­sis­tant to stan­dard ther­a­pies, such as ta­mox­ifen, Car­roll’s re­search sug­gests.

The fund­ing will help Az­e­ria shep­herd the ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­py in­to the clin­ic and help the com­pa­ny ex­pand its ar­se­nal of in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al drugs.

The Cam­bridge, UK-based drug de­vel­op­er pre­vi­ous­ly raised £5.5 mil­lion in a Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing from the CRT Pi­o­neer Fund, which is man­aged by UK based fund man­ag­er Sixth El­e­ment Cap­i­tal.

This fresh in­jec­tion of £32 mil­lion in Se­ries B fi­nanc­ing was led by Syn­cona, which made a hefty £29.5 mil­lion com­mit­ment.

An FDA advisory committee noted with concern a small safety database but unanimously endorsed a Horizon Therapeutics drug for a rare eye autoimmune disease that can blind patients: teprotumumab for thyroid eye disease (TED).

“It was a pretty easy vote,” said Erica Brittain, an NIH biostatistician and one of the 12 panelists on FDA’s Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee.

Timing is Everything
When we launched Octagon Therapeutics in late 2017, I was convinced that the time was right for a new antibiotic discovery venture. The company was founded on impressive academic pedigree and the management team had known each other for years. Our first program was based on a compelling approach to targeting central metabolism in the most dangerous bacterial pathogens. We had already shown a high level of efficacy in animal infection models and knew our drug was safe in humans.

Amid Shehnaaz Suliman’s lengthy resume it could be easy to miss her stint leading early-stage Alzheimer’s R&D at Genentech, where she oversaw a program for the ill-fated crenezumab and initiated one of the first prevention studies around the devastating neurodegenerative disease. But it is this experience that she — after thinking long and hard about her next career move over the past months — will be leaning heavily on as the first president and COO of Alector.

Biogen’s fierce focus on disorders of the brain has hit another roadblock.

On Friday, the US drugmaker — which recently resurrected its amyloid-targeting Alzheimer’s drug, aducanumab — said its anti-tau drug, gosuranemab, failed a mid-stage study in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare brain disorder that results from deterioration of brain cells that control movement and thought.