When Aard­vark Ther­a­peu­tics CEO Tien Lee start­ed his work on the biotech’s lead can­di­date, ap­petite sup­pres­sion was the goal for the small mol­e­cule.  Soon af­ter, his team start­ed to see added ben­e­fits with low­er blood glu­cose lev­els and an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry ac­tiv­i­ty. On the tail end of that, the com­pa­ny has emerged from stealth mode and an­nounced to­day that they’ve raised enough cash in the B round to cov­er mid-stage de­vel­op­ment work.

San Diego-based Aard­vark has se­cured $29 mil­lion in Se­ries B fi­nanc­ing. The mon­ey will be used to com­plete three Phase II tri­als of its lead com­pound ARD-101, a small mol­e­cule bit­ter taste re­cep­tor pan-ag­o­nist.  The funds will al­so be used to ad­vance ad­di­tion­al for­mu­la­tions for the can­di­date.

The fundrais­ing was led by Sor­ren­to Ther­a­peu­tics and fea­tured par­tic­i­pa­tion from Vick­ers Ven­ture Part­ners, Pre­mier Part­ners, BNH In­vest­ment, and Ko­rea Omega. The Foun­da­tion for Prad­er-Willi Re­search par­tic­i­pat­ed as well, which is key be­cause a Phase II tri­al in pa­tients with Prad­er-Willi Syn­drome is set to kick off lat­er this year. PWS is a ge­net­ic dis­or­der that leads pa­tients to be­come con­stant­ly hun­gry. That can of­ten lead to obe­si­ty and type 2 di­a­betes.

“I think we’re re­al­ly on to some­thing,” Lee said in a call with End­points News Wednes­day. “There are a few com­pa­nies that have looked in­to this space be­fore but no one has re­al­ly delved in and tried to ex­ploit this gut-brain path­way us­ing bit­ter taste re­cep­tors.”

ARD-101 has shown pos­i­tive ef­fects against obe­si­ty, hy­per­pha­gia, di­a­betes, hy­per­lipi­demia and in­flam­ma­tion in an­i­mal mod­els so far.

The drug uti­lizes bit­ter taste re­cep­tors, which Lee says are not on­ly in the mouth, but all over the body, and act as na­ture’s way of pro­tect­ing you against tox­ins. Over 99% of the drug is re­tained in the gut, which nor­mal­ly could be a bad thing for small mol­e­cules, but in this case, it ac­ti­vates en­teroen­docrine cells in the gut. When giv­en through an IV, the can­di­date doesn’t work the same, Lee said.

Aard­vark raised $10 mil­lion dur­ing its Se­ries A fundrais­ing two years ago, and that mon­ey was used to bring the can­di­date to in-hu­man tri­als. While the $29 mil­lion will more than cov­er the com­ple­tion of three Phase II tri­al, there is a lot more op­por­tu­ni­ty on the hori­zon, Lee said. The in­tent is to de­vel­op be­yond PWS in the long term, but for now it’s fo­cused on tak­ing a shot at an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for the ge­net­ic dis­ease — a goal that has elud­ed oth­ers.

“The main qual­i­ty of life im­pair­ment for Prad­er-Willi Syn­drome is an un­abat­ed ap­petite, says the CEO. “These kids, if giv­en un­re­strict­ed food ac­cess, they eat to the point of stom­ach rup­ture some­times. We have a lot of di­a­betes and obe­si­ty re­lat­ed com­pli­ca­tions in young adult­hood, and the fact that we’re hit­ting a va­ri­ety of hor­mones, we think we’re able to shut down ap­petite in a very unique way. We’ll see. Bi­ol­o­gy is hard and we’re not mak­ing any promis­es, but we’re def­i­nite­ly very hope­ful that we can see a dif­fer­ence for these kids.”

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”