Elevian banks $5.5 million seed round to pursue ‘young blood’ derived anti-aging tech

September 7, 2018 10:44 AM EDT

John Carroll

Elevian banks $5.5 million seed round to pursue 'young blood' derived anti-aging tech

Peter Diamandis

A startup in San Francisco called Elevian has rounded up $5.5 million in seed cash to pursue its work on a regenerative medicine program.

The big idea here is that research at Stanford and Harvard found that “young blood” has a regenerative impact on organs. And they believe as a consequence that boosting GDF11 — growth differentiation factor 11 — could play an anti-aging role in humans.

The founders have licensed the tech they’re working on from Harvard.

Bold Capital, WTI, Stanford StartX fund, Longevity fund, Kizoo Ventures, Thynk Capital, and other investors chipped in.

Cue the big dreams.

“Elevian is helping to lead a revolution in longevity. We are proud to support them as investment partners,” said Peter Diamandis, founding investor.

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John Carroll

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Medical animation: Making it easier for the site and the patient to understand

Medical animation has in recent years become an increasingly important tool for conveying niche information to a varied audience, particularly to those audiences without expertise in the specialist area. Science programmes today, for example, have moved from the piece-to-camera of the university professor explaining how a complex disease mechanism works, to actually showing the viewer first-hand what it might look like to shrink ourselves down to the size of an ant’s foot, and travel inside the human body to witness these processes in action. Effectively communicating a complex disease pathophysiology, or the novel mechanism of action of a new drug, can be complex. This is especially difficult when the audience domain knowledge is limited or non-existent. Medical animation can help with this communication challenge in several ways.
Improved accessibility to visualisation
Visualisation is a core component of our ability to understand a concept. Ask 10 people to visualise an apple, and each will come up with a slightly different image, some apples smaller than others, some more round, some with bites taken. Acceptable, you say, we can move on to the next part of the story. Now ask 10 people to visualise how HIV’s capsid protein gets arranged into the hexamers and pentamers that form the viral capsid that holds HIV’s genetic material. This request may pose a challenge even to someone with some virology knowledge, and it is that inability to effectively visualise what is going on that holds us back from fully understanding the rest of the story. So how does medical animation help us to overcome this visualisation challenge?

Alice Shaw, Lung Cancer Foundation of America

October 18, 2019 09:29 AM EDTUpdated 1 minute ago

John Carroll

People

Top ALK expert and cancer drug researcher Alice Shaw bids adieu to academia, hello to Novartis

Jay Bradner has recruited a marquee oncology drug researcher into the ranks of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. Alice Shaw is jumping from prestigious posts intertwined through Mass General, Harvard and Dana-Farber to take the lead of NIBR’s translational clinical oncology group.

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Christine Bunt, Robert Langer. Verseau

October 21, 2019 12:33 AM EDT

Amber Tong

Startups

Venture

Armed with Langer tech and $50M, Verseau hails new checkpoint drugs unleashing macrophages against cancer

The rising popularity of CD47 has propelled the “don’t-eat-me” signal to household name status in the immuno-oncology world. But just as PD-(L)1 merely represents the most fruitful of all checkpoints regulating T cells, Verseau Therapeutics is convinced that CD47 is one of many regulators one can modulate to stir up or tame the immune system.

“Macrophages are interesting because we were all educated probably 20 years ago that they are the big eaters in the immune system, but they’re really the orchestrators of the immune system,” CEO Christine Bunt said.

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

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Mirati Therapeutics

San Diego, CA, USA

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Hal Barron, GSK's president of R&D and CSO, speaks to Endpoints News founder and editor John Carroll in London at Endpoints' #UKBIO19 summit on October 8, 2019

October 14, 2019 05:16 PM EDT

John Carroll

[Video] Celebrating trial failures, changing the culture and allying with California dreamers: R&D chief Hal Barron talks about a new era at GSK

Last week I had a chance to sit down with Hal Barron at Endpoints’ #UKBIO19 summit to discuss his views on R&D at GSK, a topic that has been central to his life since he took the top research post close to 2 years ago. During the conversation, Barron talked about changing the culture at GSK, a move that involves several new approaches — one of which involves celebrating their setbacks as they shift resources to the most promising programs in the pipeline. Barron also discussed his new alliances in the Bay Area — including his collaboration pact with Lyell, which we covered here — frankly assesses the pluses and minuses of the UK drug development scene, and talks about his plans for making GSK a much more effective drug developer.

This is one discussion you won’t want to miss. Insider and Enterprise subscribers can log-in to watch the video.

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October 17, 2019 09:25 AM EDTUpdated 10:07 AM

John Carroll

R&D

Mirati preps its first look at their KRAS G12C contender, and they have to clear a high bar for success

If you’re a big KRAS G12C fan, mark your calendars for October 28 at 4:20 pm EDT.

That’s when Mirati $MRTX will unveil its first peek at the early clinical data available on MRTX849 in presentations at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Boston.

Mirati has been experiencing the full effect of a rival’s initial success at targeting the G12C pocket found on KRAS, offering the biotech some support on the concept they’re after — and biotech fans a race to the top. Amgen made a big splash with its first positive snapshot on lung cancer, but deflated sky-high expectations as it proved harder to find similar benefits in other types of cancers.

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October 17, 2019 07:29 AM EDTUpdated 07:48 AM

John Carroll

R&D

The FDA will hustle up an expedited review for AstraZeneca’s next shot at a blockbuster cancer drug franchise

AstraZeneca paid a hefty price to partner with Daiichi Sankyo on their experimental antibody drug conjugate for HER2 positive breast cancer. And they’ve been rewarded with a fast ride through the FDA, with a straight shot at creating another blockbuster oncology franchise.

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Sean Parker, AP

October 17, 2019 07:00 AM EDTUpdated October 18, 12:41 AM

John Carroll

Cell/Gene Tx

Startups

Venture

Sean Parker helps create a CRISPRed cell therapy 2.0 play — and he’s got a high-profile set of leaders on the team

You can rack up one more high-profile debut effort in the wave of activity forming around cell therapy 2.0. It’s another appealing Bay Area group that’s attracted some of the top hands in the business to a multi-year effort to create a breakthrough. And they have $85 million in hand to make that first big step to the clinic.

Today it’s Ken Drazan and the team at South San Francisco-based ArsenalBio that are coming from behind the curtain for a public bow, backed by billionaire Sean Parker and a collection of investors that includes Beth Seidenberg’s new venture investment operation based in LA.
Drazan — a J&J Innovation vet with a long record of entrepreneurial endeavors — exited the stage in 2018 when his last mission ended as he stepped aside as president of Grail. It wasn’t long, though, before he was helping out with a business plan for ArsenalBio that revolved around the work of a large group of interconnected scientists supported by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunology.

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ENDPOINTS CAREERS

Medical Director/Senior Medical Director

Mirati Therapeutics

San Diego, CA, USA

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October 16, 2019 10:07 AM EDT

John Carroll

Pharma

R&D

CSL accuses rival Pharming of participating in a scheme to rip off IP on HAE while recruiting senior R&D staffer

Pharming has landed in the middle of a legal donnybrook after recruiting a senior executive from a rival R&D team at CSL. The Australian pharma giant slapped Pharming with a lawsuit alleging that the Dutch biotech’s new employee, Joseph Chiao, looted a large cache of proprietary documents as he hit the exit. And they want it all back.
Federal Judge Juan Sanchez in the Eastern District Pennsylvania court issued an injunction on Tuesday prohibiting Chiao from doing any work on HAE or primary immune deficiency in his new job and demanding that he return any material from CSL that he may have in his possession. And he wants Pharming to tell its employees not to ask for any information on the forbidden topics.
For its part, Pharming fired off an indignant response this morning denying any involvement in extracting any kind of IP from CSL, adding that it’s cooperating in the internal probe that CSL has underway.

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October 16, 2019 07:54 AM EDT

John Carroll

R&D

Eli Lilly’s first PhIII showdown for their $1.6B cancer drug just flopped — what now?

When Eli Lilly plunked down $1.6 billion in cash to acquire Armo Biosciences a little more than a year ago, the stars seemed aligned in its favor. The jewel in the crown they were buying was pegilodecakin, which had cleared the proof-of-concept stage and was already in a Phase III trial for pancreatic cancer.

And that study just failed.

Lilly reported this morning that their cancer drug flopped on overall survival when added to FOLFOX (folinic acid, 5-FU, oxaliplatin), compared to FOLFOX alone among patients suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer.

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