Just days af­ter Gilead and its new sub­sidiary Kite won a ground­break­ing FDA ap­proval for their CAR-T ther­a­py Yescar­ta for B-cell lym­phomas, Lau­sanne, Switzer­land-based ADC Ther­a­peu­tics is rolling out a jaw-drop­ping $200 mil­lion mega-round to gam­ble — in part — on a next-gen an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate that the back­ers feel can com­pete just fine with the per­son­al­ized cell ther­a­py.

The lat­est round brings ADC’s to­tal ven­ture take to $455 mil­lion, po­si­tion­ing them for a pair of Phase II stud­ies that po­ten­tial­ly could put them in line for an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval — par­tic­u­lar­ly if they come close to match­ing the orig­i­nal proof-of-con­cept da­ta that was post­ed last June.

Chris Mar­tin was one of the orig­i­nal board mem­bers at ADC back in 2011 when the biotech was launched. Al­most ex­act­ly three years ago he helped arrange the sale of the UK’s Spirogen — where he was CEO — to As­traZeneca in a $440 mil­lion deal, which the phar­ma gi­ant paired with a $20 mil­lion in­vest­ment in ADC. As­traZeneca matched that in­vest­ment with an un­spec­i­fied li­cens­ing deal with ADC which is in the clin­ic. Au­ven Ther­a­peu­tics — found­ed by Stephen Evans-Freke and Pe­ter Corr in Lau­sanne — fund­ed both com­pa­nies and Mar­tin be­came the CEO at ADC two years ago.

Chris Mar­tin

Au­ven Ther­a­peu­tics al­so joined the ex­pand­ed syn­di­cate on this round, along­side Red­mile, the Wild fam­i­ly of­fice and As­traZeneca, among oth­er un­named in­vestors.

But ADC and Spirogen didn’t just share a com­mon fi­nan­cial pedi­gree, they al­so share a tech­nol­o­gy: pyrroloben­zo­di­azepine-based war­heads which the re­searchers be­lieve are or­ders of mag­ni­tude bet­ter than the first gen­er­a­tion of an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates that were steered to the mar­ket by Seat­tle Ge­net­ics and oth­ers. These drugs use an an­ti­body to steer their way to can­cer cells and then drop a tox­ic pay­load where they are in­tend­ed to do the most good.

Last sum­mer, ADC backed up its new-wave boast by rolling out an ear­ly snap­shot of Phase I hu­man da­ta from its two lead ther­a­pies — AD­CT-301 and AD­CT-402.

Their 402 pro­gram tar­gets CD19, a fa­vorite in the CAR-T crowd. And re­searchers un­der CMO Jay Fein­gold, a for­mer VP of can­cer re­search at Wyeth, reg­is­tered a 57% over­all re­sponse rate, with an im­pres­sive 43% com­plete re­sponse tal­ly in drug-re­sis­tant cas­es of dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phomas. Their drug 301 came in with a 38% over­all re­sponse rate in a small group of re­frac­to­ry Hodgkin’s lym­phoma pa­tients.

Mar­tin, in his own un­der­stat­ed way, tells me: “We were en­cour­aged by that.”

ADC has been grow­ing as the cash con­tin­ues to roll in. Now 66 staffers, Mar­tin ex­pects to have a pay­roll of 70 by year’s end. On­ly 14 of those jobs are ac­tu­al­ly in Lau­sanne, the rest are scat­tered around the biotech world. The pre­clin­i­cal work is done in Lon­don, clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment in New Jer­sey and man­u­fac­tur­ing is in San Fran­cis­co, where they’ve been work­ing with Stem­cen­trx, now a sub­sidiary of Ab­b­Vie.

Both of these mid-stage stud­ies are ex­pect­ed to get start­ed in the first half of next year, with 402 out front with a Q1 launch. Mar­tin ex­pects pa­tient re­cruit­ment to take about 6 months, with da­ta by the end of 2018 or ear­ly 2019, when they can re­view about fil­ing with the reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies. Mar­tin isn’t promis­ing ex­act­ly when that will be, but fil­ing on Phase II in can­cer is now stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure in the on­col­o­gy world.

“At the mo­ment,” he says, “our over­all guid­ing prin­ci­ple is to get ef­fec­tive drugs in­to pa­tients that need it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

While Yescar­ta has been post­ing im­pres­sive out­comes ahead of 402, Mar­tin doesn’t feel like they’ve been beat­en to the punch on DL­B­CL. Quite the con­trary. With a drug that can be de­liv­ered straight to pa­tients, pre­sum­ably at a low­er cost and sim­i­lar ef­fi­ca­cy, with a much safer side ef­fect pro­file, he feels the lit­tle biotech can com­pete with Gilead and its glob­al mar­ket­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion.

By next year, ADC will al­so have six ther­a­pies in the clin­ic — with two more lin­ing up INDs — open­ing up some more part­ner­ing prospects.

In the mean­time, Mar­tin is al­so qui­et­ly con­fi­dent that the com­pa­ny will be in a good po­si­tion to IPO, when the time is right. At this point, with a pri­vate syn­di­cate ready to come up with the biggest Eu­ro­pean biotech round in some three years, he says an IPO would have just proven to be a ma­jor dis­trac­tion. Un­til the right time, he says, ADC re­mains “IPO ready,” with au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials and a prospec­tus it’s keep­ing up to date as they pro­ceed.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

The FDA today approved Emergent BioSolutions’ Narcan brand naloxone nasal spray for over-the-counter sales. The nod was expected and comes on the heels of a unanimous 19-0 advisory committee vote in favor of approval last month.

The move to OTC means the opioid overdose reversal agent will now be available on grocery, convenience and gas stations shelves, as well as potentially for purchase online.

A company with public links to Sanofi and Moderna has raised more money to expand its mission of improving diversity and enrollment in clinical trials.

Inato put the word out on Wednesday that it raised $20 million via an A2 round to advance its matching platform between pharma companies and potential clinical trial sites.

Inato CEO Kourosh Davarpanah told Endpoints News that with the $20 million in hand, it will pursue improvements to its diversity offerings, its focus on oncology and data collection.