Al­most two years ago, Mer­ri­mack’s high-pro­file serib­an­tum­ab pro­gram flopped in a tri­al that at­tempt­ed to treat non-small cell lung can­cer in com­bi­na­tion with an­oth­er drug. Now, that pro­gram is get­ting a sec­ond chance.

El­e­va­tion On­col­o­gy an­nounced its launch Tues­day with $32.5 mil­lion in Se­ries A fund­ing and serib­an­tum­ab as its lead can­di­date. Rather than fo­cus­ing on NSCLCs like Mer­ri­mack, El­e­va­tion will aim to use the com­pound to treat sol­id tu­mors with the rare NRG1 ge­nom­ic fu­sion.

The fund­ing was led by Ais­ling Cap­i­tal, and oth­er in­vestors in­clud­ed Ver­tex Ven­tures, Qim­ing Ven­ture Part­ners USA, Driehaus Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and BVF Part­ners.

First ac­quired by El­e­va­tion in Ju­ly 2019 for up to $58 mil­lion, serib­an­tum­ab is a mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body that binds to hu­man epi­der­mal growth fac­tor re­cep­tor 3, or Her3. The can­di­date was just one in a long string of clin­i­cal busts for Mer­ri­mack, ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult­ing in the biotech sell­ing sev­er­al as­sets and lay­ing off all its staff and ex­ec­u­tives. Mer­ri­mack test­ed serib­an­tum­ab specif­i­cal­ly in com­bi­na­tion with do­c­etax­el and failed to show im­prove­ments in pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival com­pared to do­c­etax­el treat­ments alone.

But El­e­va­tion and its founder, Shawn Le­land, are fo­cused on a dif­fer­ent ap­proach for their own pro­gram. Where­as Mer­ri­mack re­searched how serib­an­tum­ab can treat pa­tients with Her3 am­pli­fi­ca­tions and over­ex­pres­sion, El­e­va­tion is re­pur­pos­ing the com­pound to set its sights on the NRG1 fu­sion that is more ac­tive in dri­ving tu­mor growth, Le­land said.

Af­ter run­ning its due dili­gence, El­e­va­tion de­ter­mined serib­an­tum­ab would be a good fit for the biotech from both a “bi­o­log­i­cal and op­er­a­tional per­spec­tive,” Le­land said. The com­pa­ny want­ed a can­di­date that had po­ten­tial to treat these fu­sions and had pre­vi­ous­ly been test­ed in Her3 pa­tients, and serib­an­tum­ab fit Le­land’s bill.

As part of its launch, El­e­va­tion al­so ini­ti­at­ed a Phase II study to re­search the ef­fi­ca­cy of serib­an­tum­ab in these new NRG1 tar­gets. The study, dubbed CRE­STONE, is al­ready en­rolling pa­tients, and the key thing for Le­land is the en­roll­ment of any pa­tient with an NRG1-ex­press­ing sol­id tu­mor, re­gard­less of which kind of can­cer they have.

Though the NRG1 fu­sion on­ly ap­pears in 0.2% of pa­tients with sol­id tu­mors, it is most com­mon­ly ex­pressed in cer­tain types of lung and pan­cre­at­ic can­cers. Le­land said he be­lieves these pa­tients will bet­ter ben­e­fit from El­e­va­tion’s serib­an­tum­ab pro­gram be­cause, un­like a typ­i­cal T cell im­munother­a­py treat­ment, the study is more honed in on spe­cif­ic tu­mors.

“The whole de­sire here is to be able to iden­ti­fy pa­tients most like­ly to ben­e­fit up­front … and then treat them with the drug that we know is bi­o­log­i­cal­ly tai­lored to their dis­ease,” Le­land said. “And based up­on that bi­ol­o­gy, that should shut down the sig­nal­ing and growth of their can­cer cells.”

In terms of com­peti­tors in the NRG1 fu­sion field, El­e­va­tion is mea­sur­ing it­self against Rain Ther­a­peu­tics’ tar­lox­o­tinib and Merus’ MCLA-128. Both of these pro­grams have reached the Phase I/II stage, putting CRE­STONE at or near the same point in de­vel­op­ment. Pre­clin­i­cal da­ta from CRE­STONE will be sub­mit­ted for pub­li­ca­tion lat­er this year.

But giv­en that it’s still ear­ly for these pro­grams, right now it’s any­body’s game. In the mean­time, El­e­va­tion hopes to add sim­i­lar can­di­dates as it ex­pands its port­fo­lio and con­tin­ues CRE­STONE test­ing with its NRG1-fo­cused re­cruit­ment.

“By hav­ing those next-gen­er­a­tion se­quenc­ing re­sults, it al­lows you to un­der­stand your tu­mor and what’s caus­ing it to grow, and we be­lieve every pa­tient should be en­ti­tled to that,” Le­land said.

Roche had big plans for etrolizumab. Eyeing a hyper-competitive IBD and Crohn’s market where they have not historically been a player, the company rolled out 8 different Phase III trials, testing the antibody for two different uses across a range of different patient groups.

On Monday, Roche released results for 4 of those studies, and they mark a decided setback for both the Swiss pharma and their biotech sub Genentech, potentially spelling an end to a drug they put over half-a-decade and millions of dollars behind.

Dyne Therapeutics started out last April with a modest $50 million to mine targeted muscle disease therapies from its in-house conjugate technology. The biotech has now convinced more investors that it’s got gems on its hands, closing $115 million in fresh financing to push its next-gen oligonucleotide drugs into the clinic.

Vida Ventures and Surveyor Capital led the round, joined by a group of other new backers including Wellington Management Company, Logos Capital and Franklin Templeton.

Reata Pharmaceuticals $RETA made waves last October when its drug omaveloxolone produced positive trial results in treating a rare neurological disorder, but the candidate’s path forward became much murkier Monday.

In a report of quarterly earnings, the biotech divulged that the FDA is considering delaying omaveloxolone’s NDA pending completion of a second trial. That could push back approval by at least a year given that the target population, individuals with Friedreich’s ataxia, is limited and progression of the hard-to-treat illness is notoriously slow. The Covid-19 pandemic would also hinder Reata’s ability to complete an additional trial.

Despite the FDA putting a partial clinical hold on its lead program only a few weeks ago, Boston-based Pieris Pharmaceuticals is plowing forward with a new collaboration.

Pieris will work with Eli Lilly to further advance studies on PRS-343, a 4-1BB/HER2 bispecific for HER2-positive tumors, in combination with the latter’s ramucirumab and paclitaxel for the second-line treatment of patients with HER2-positive gastric cancer in a single-arm, Phase II study.