Laurence Reid (Third Rock)

Deci­bel Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $82M as Lau­rence Reid looks to steer gene ther­a­py piv­ot

Lau­rence Reid could have picked a bet­ter time to take his lat­est CEO job.

It was Jan­u­ary 29 when Deci­bel Ther­a­peu­tics an­nounced they were bring­ing in the for­mer Al­ny­lam and Mil­len­ni­um ex­ec, and the coro­n­avirus was still a dis­tant threat, not even yet named. The job would have been tall enough with­out a pan­dem­ic; af­ter five years and $100 mil­lion, Deci­bel was prepar­ing to piv­ot its plat­form in a new di­rec­tion, work­ing to ex­pand on gene ther­a­py and re­gen­er­a­tion. Reid would need to raise the cash to do so.

Still, de­spite the ear­ly bumps of clear­ing out labs and fig­ur­ing out how to pitch an in­vestor via Zoom, Reid says they’ve weath­ered the storm. And to­day they an­nounced they’ve raised an $82 mil­lion Se­ries D led by Or­biMed, near­ly dou­bling their cap­i­tal to date and giv­ing Reid two years of run­way to get a plat­form they hope can trans­form hear­ing in­to the clin­ic.

“March, April, when we were still learn­ing so much, [there] was so much un­cer­tain­ty and a cer­tain de­gree of fear, so for any­one man­ag­ing peo­ple through that — for any com­pa­ny in any in­dus­try but cer­tain­ly for biotech — is a com­plete­ly unique chal­lenge,” Reid told End­points News.

“But I was re­al­ly im­pressed by my new col­leagues,” he said, not­ing they’ve got­ten labs and oth­er op­er­a­tions safe­ly back on track. “It’s been re­al­ly gal­va­niz­ing to see that ac­tu­al­ly.”

Deci­bel finds it­self among three ma­jor Boston area biotechs chas­ing cures for hear­ing dis­or­ders, next to the well-heeled gene ther­a­py up­start Ak­ou­os and the stem cell re­gen­er­a­tion de­vel­op­ers at Fre­quen­cy Ther­a­peu­tics. Ak­ou­os is ahead when it comes to gene ther­a­py, with a can­di­date near­ing the clin­ic to cor­rect hear­ing in pa­tients with mu­ta­tions in the OTOF gene.

Deci­bel spent years fo­cused on pre­vent­ing hear­ing loss, but they piv­ot­ed over the win­ter. Faced with what they char­ac­ter­ized as sur­pris­ing ad­vance­ments in ge­nom­ic and re­gen­er­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy and hav­ing failed to find a bio­mark­er that could let them run a pre­ven­ta­tive tri­al, they de­cid­ed to scrap key pro­grams and fo­cus on gene ther­a­pies that can re­store hear­ing loss.

De­vel­oped in part­ner­ship with Re­gen­eron, Deci­bel’s gene ther­a­py for the same pro­tein isn’t sched­uled to hit the clin­ic un­til 2022, but Reid tout­ed the ad­van­tage of the ba­sic sci­ence plat­form they built over the last five years.

“We’ve built this plat­form for in­te­grat­ing dif­fer­ent sin­gle cell ge­nom­ic tech­nol­o­gy, to look at DNA and RNA and splic­ing of RNA and we in­te­grate that to give us a com­plete mol­e­c­u­lar pic­ture of in­di­vid­ual cell types in the in­ner ear,” he said. They fo­cus that tech on the hair cells that trans­late sig­nals from the out­side world to the brain, and use gene ther­a­pies to re­store them. “It’s the com­bi­na­tion of those plat­form pieces that unique­ly de­fine Deci­bel,” he said.

Al­though they’re be­gin­ning with fix­ing a sin­gle gene in peo­ple with the OTOF mu­ta­tions, the longer term goal is to build cures for more gen­er­al hear­ing loss and bal­ance dis­or­ders. It’s an in­creas­ing­ly com­mon line among a sub­set of gene ther­a­py com­pa­nies, but first they’ll have to prove that they can just fix a sin­gle com­mon­ly dys­func­tion­al gene.

Reid said they now have enough mon­ey to get that pro­gram in­to the clin­ic. They’ll hope to fol­low with the broad­er ap­proach be­gin­ning at the end of 2022, grab­bing more cash as they do.

“We felt that giv­en where the com­pa­ny was, we want­ed to do a pri­vate fi­nanc­ing,” Reid said. “We’ll go to the pub­lic mar­ket when we have the need.”

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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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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Stephen MacMillan, Hologic CEO (Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

Il­lu­mi­na names Ho­log­ic CEO as new board mem­ber and chair

Illumina’s board appointed two new members, including Hologic CEO Stephen MacMillan as the non-executive chair, a move that followed a proxy fight that saw shareholders oust the company’s board chair.

The DNA sequencing company also appointed Scott Ullem, the CFO of Edwards Lifesciences, to the board, according to a company statement.

Illumina’s plans to add two new board members came as Carl Icahn waged a board proxy campaign culminating with shareholders electing his candidate, Andrew Teno, over board chair John Thompson. Illumina CEO Francis deSouza survived a threat to his board seat by securing more than twice the shareholder votes than his challenger. Another Illumina candidate, Robert Epstein, was also elected and remained on the board.

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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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