Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing has a fresh com­pa­ny out this week, one that aims to lay the ground­work for a whole new dis­ci­pline.

Sen­da Bio­sciences launched Wednes­day with $88 mil­lion in Flag­ship cash. The goal? Gain in­sights in­to the mol­e­c­u­lar con­nec­tions be­tween peo­ple and co­e­volved non­hu­man species like plants and bac­te­ria, paving the way for “In­ter­sys­tems Bi­ol­o­gy.”

Guil­laume Pfe­fer

Guil­laume Pfe­fer has been tapped to run the show, a 25-year biotech vet­er­an who comes from GSK af­ter lead­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s shin­gles vac­cine.

“For Sen­da, we are zoom­ing in­to what’s go­ing on at hu­man lev­els, and we rec­og­nize that these in­ter­ac­tions are the prod­uct of evo­lu­tion since the dawn of time,” Pfe­fer told End­points News. “We know which species are in­volved in our bod­ies and where.”

A cen­ter­piece of Sen­da’s pro­pri­etary tech in­volves ma­chine learn­ing to cre­ate what the com­pa­ny hopes is an en­tire­ly new class of drugs. By fo­cus­ing in part on the bac­te­ria that re­side in hu­mans, Sen­da is look­ing at po­ten­tial­ly de­vel­op­ing large mol­e­cule med­i­cines like pep­tides and nu­cle­ic acids us­ing oral ad­min­is­tra­tion, which the com­pa­ny says is a first.

In­ter­sys­tems Bi­ol­o­gy has been in the works at Flag­ship for some time. The firm says the dis­ci­pline is based on a decade of re­search in oth­er ar­eas, in­clud­ing mi­cro­bio­me sci­ence and com­pu­ta­tion­al bi­ol­o­gy, and the cel­lu­lar in­ter­ac­tions Sen­da is an­a­lyz­ing can be found in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent places with­in the body.

“Through the ex­plo­rations con­duct­ed by Flag­ship Labs over the last sev­er­al years we have dis­cov­ered that these in­ter­con­nec­tions have pro­found im­pli­ca­tions on hu­man health,” Flag­ship founder Noubar Afe­fan told End­points News in an email.

One prime ex­am­ple is the neu­ro­trans­mit­ter sero­tonin, most of which is not found in the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem but the gut. As much as 90% of sero­tonin is pro­duced in re­sponse to bac­te­ria break­ing down com­pounds with­in the di­ges­tive tract, Sen­da says, and if this reg­u­la­tion falls out of whack, it can lead to health prob­lems with both low and high blood sug­ar.

“With this ap­proach, you re­al­ize that we have a phar­ma­cy with­in us,” Pfe­fer said. “The key point is we have evolved with the bac­te­ria, and now with Sen­da are able to look with high res­o­lu­tion in­to how the species with­in us com­mu­ni­cate and par­tic­i­pate in dis­ease and health.”

David Berry

Sen­da cur­rent­ly has six on­go­ing pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams un­der its belt across mul­ti­ple ar­eas, with INDs ex­pect­ed for each by the end of 2022. In neu­rol­o­gy, Sen­da has can­di­dates in mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis and Parkin­son’s dis­ease. For on­col­o­gy, they’re look­ing at im­muno-on­col­o­gy and col­orec­tal can­cer. And in chron­ic and meta­bol­ic dis­ease, the first tar­gets are chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease and obe­si­ty.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Pfe­fer men­tioned that Sen­da is look­ing at a bac­te­ria that in­ter­feres with L-dopa in the treat­ment of Parkin­son’s and at­tempt­ing to dis­rupt that process, thus mak­ing ther­a­pies more ef­fec­tive.

As Sen­da moves its six pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams for­ward, Pfe­fer’s goal is to con­tin­ue to de­ploy its dis­cov­ery en­gine in­to fur­ther in­di­ca­tions, set­ting up the com­pa­ny for more pro­grams once the proof of mech­a­nism has been es­tab­lished at the end of 2022.

“We are touch­ing on some­thing very fun­da­men­tal here and very pro­found,” Pfe­fer said.

The com­pa­ny was co-found­ed by sev­er­al mem­bers of Flag­ship’s team, in­clud­ing part­ners David Berry and Igna­cio Mar­tinez. Sen­da’s board will be chaired by Flag­ship’s ex­ec­u­tive part­ner John Mendlein.

Immunocore spent much of 2019 dealing with the fallout of the Neil Woodford scandal, as the former star investor’s fall crashed the biotech’s valuation out of unicorn range. Now it turns out that the company spent 2020 dealing with another internal scandal.

The longtime UK biotech darling disclosed in their IPO filing last week that they had fallen victim to an alleged kickback scheme involving one of their employees. After a whistleblower came forward, they said in their F-1, they spent the summer and spring investigating, finding fraud on the part of an employee and two outside vendors.

A global pandemic couldn’t slow down what turned out to be a record year for biotech IPOs. With the calendar turning toward 2021, the Endpoints News team is prepped to track each new filing this year, and the outcome. We’re off to another hot start at least.

Below, you’ll find the companies that have filed to go public, in addition to those that have already priced. Through the first two business weeks of January, there have already been 9 biotechs that have filed or priced, and the number is only expected to grow. We’ll keep the tracker updated as it does.