Carol Robinson, Professor Dame Carol Robinson Research Group

Drug dis­cov­ery in HD: Ox­ford spin­of­f's mass spec­trom­e­try ap­proach scores fresh fund­ing

The tech­nol­o­gy used to de­tect ex­plo­sives at air­ports — mass spec­trom­e­try — is be­ing pi­lot­ed as an en­gine for drug dis­cov­ery.

Mass spec­trom­e­try is a tool de­signed to mea­sure with pro­found ac­cu­ra­cy the mass of a sin­gle mol­e­cule. Typ­i­cal­ly, mass spec­trom­e­ters can be used to iden­ti­fy un­known com­pounds, to quan­ti­fy known com­pounds, and to de­ter­mine the struc­ture and chem­i­cal prop­er­ties of mol­e­cules.

Us­ing this in­for­ma­tion to de­vel­op drugs, ver­sus us­ing tra­di­tion­al cell-based as­says is an ap­proach pi­o­neered by Car­ol Robin­son, the first fe­male pro­fes­sor of chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford. Along­side her for­mer stu­dents, Robin­son found­ed OMass Ther­a­peu­tics to move it for­ward in the field of mem­brane tar­gets, in­clud­ing GPCRs.

On Mon­day, the Ox­ford spin­off un­veiled £27.5 mil­lion in ad­di­tion­al Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing from Syn­cona, Ox­ford Sci­ences In­no­va­tion (OSI), and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford, bring­ing its to­tal haul to £41.5 mil­lion.

“It’s drug dis­cov­ery in high de­f­i­n­i­tion…it’s all about re­veal­ing the pic­ture with high­er res­o­lu­tion. And it’s about high con­tent da­ta. The rea­son mass spec­trom­e­try is in­ter­est­ing in drug dis­cov­ery is that the con­tent that you get from the da­ta is much high­er res­o­lu­tion than through a cell-based as­say,” OMass chief Ros Dee­gan told End­points News.

“So in a cell-based as­say, you’re ef­fec­tive­ly an­swer­ing on­ly the ques­tion that you asked, where­as, in na­tive mass spec­trom­e­try, it’s a bio­phys­i­cal ap­proach.”

The ma­jor­i­ty of ex­ist­ing ther­a­peu­tics tar­get mem­brane pro­tein — ac­ces­si­ble on the sur­face of cells — to mod­i­fy cel­lu­lar sig­nal­ing. In con­trast to tra­di­tion­al cell-based as­says, the mass spec­trom­e­try ap­proach of­fers ‘high de­f­i­n­i­tion’ in­sight in­to un­der­stand­ing mem­brane pro­tein bi­ol­o­gy, Dee­gan not­ed.

The plat­form pro­vides ac­cess to dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal start­ing points be­cause bio­phys­i­cal ap­proach­es tend to point to­ward dif­fer­ent chem­istry — as they are not bi­ased to spe­cif­ic types of chem­istry through the use of cell-based as­says, she said. “Cell-based as­says tend to put you in lipophilic, quite of­ten large lipophilic com­pounds.”

If the ap­proach is shown to work, it could serve to short­en drug dis­cov­ery time­frames.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly the com­pa­ny aims to use high de­f­i­n­i­tion tech­nolo­gies to ef­fi­cient­ly ac­cess can­di­dates with a greater PoS (prob­a­bil­i­ty of suc­cess) in high-val­ue ar­eas, there­fore sig­nif­i­cant­ly short­en­ing the drug dis­cov­ery time­line for small mol­e­cules,” said Lach­lan MacK­in­non, prin­ci­pal at OSI in an email to End­points.

OMass in­tends to not just iden­ti­fy mol­e­cules of in­ter­est but to take them through to the mar­ket them­selves. It has three pro­grams at the mo­ment — al­though they are far from be­ing ready for the clin­ic.

The cap­i­tal in­jec­tion will give OMass — which is fo­cus­ing on im­munol­o­gy and ge­net­i­cal­ly de­fined dis­eases out­side of im­munol­o­gy — just over two years of run­way and will be used to shep­herd its lead pro­gram in­to pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

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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