Frédéric Desdouits, TreeFrog Therapeutics CEO

French biotech rais­es $75M for new cell ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing tech, Parkin­son's treat­ment

A French cell ther­a­py start­up is get­ting two new of­fices in op­po­site parts of the world, and a new CEO to boot as it an­nounces a new round of fund­ing Mon­day.

Biotech TreeFrog Ther­a­peu­tics, which is fo­cused on stem cell ther­a­py, closed a $75 mil­lion Se­ries B, the com­pa­ny an­nounced. The round brings the com­pa­ny’s to­tal fund­ing to $83 mil­lion, and al­lows them to open up of­fices in Boston and Kobe, Japan, as it ad­vances its bio­mimet­ic C-Stem tech­nol­o­gy for clin­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing. The US of­fice will start with a staff of around 10 to 15 peo­ple, but if all goes well, that will change quick­ly.

Kévin Alessan­dri

As a part of the ex­pan­sion, board mem­ber Frédéric Des­douits has been hired as the com­pa­ny’s CEO, and ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Kévin Alessan­dri will move to Boston to over­see the new of­fice. As far as the new of­fices are con­cerned, the move to Boston was at least par­tial­ly in­spired by the in­vest­ment from Bris­tol My­ers Squibb. As the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the tech­nol­o­gy are dis­cov­ered, the team wants to be close to its part­ners, as it col­lab­o­rates with oth­er play­ers.

“They came in be­cause we are a very young com­pa­ny…and we are learn­ing about the po­ten­tial of the tech­nol­o­gy al­most every month,” Des­douits said in a phone call with End­points News Mon­day. “We know we have a dis­rup­tive tech­nol­o­gy…we know we bring some­thing new, and we know it’s go­ing to take time.”

Des­douits has been with Tree Frog as a part-time ad­vi­sor for near­ly two years. He’s served as a di­rec­tor for Gen­fit, a French ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny fo­cused on liv­er dis­ease, for more than 7 years be­fore that, and was the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of French CD­MO Se­qens un­til Ju­ly 2020.

“In just two years and, with on­ly $7M in Se­ries A fund­ing, the TreeFrog Ther­a­peu­tics team tran­si­tioned C-StemTM from the bench to an in­dus­tri­al tech­nol­o­gy ap­plic­a­ble to any cell ther­a­py. We demon­strat­ed that C-StemTM out­per­forms all ex­ist­ing tech­nolo­gies for pluripo­tent stem cell ex­pan­sion in terms of scale and qual­i­ty,” he said in a state­ment. “We al­so con­firmed best-in-class pre­clin­i­cal da­ta for our cell ther­a­py pro­gram for Parkin­son’s dis­ease.”

The com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2018 in Bor­deaux, France. Its fi­nanc­ing was led by Bpifrance Large Ven­ture, a func­tion of the French Pub­lic In­vest­ment Bank that in­vests in life sci­ences and green tech­nol­o­gy, and Leonard Green & Part­ners, a Los An­ge­les-based pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm fo­cused on health­care. Eu­ro­pean ven­ture cap­i­tal group XAnge al­so led the round.

C-Stem al­lows for the mass pro­duc­tion of stem cells in in­dus­tri­al biore­ac­tors, which TreeFrog says can im­prove the qual­i­ty of cells and re­duce the cost over ex­ist­ing tech­nolo­gies. In June 2020, the team’s 50 em­ploy­ees moved in­to a 13,000 square-foot man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in France. This April, it pro­duced its first batch of stem cells in a 10-liter biore­ac­tor.

“In short, fund­ing, man­age­ment and gov­er­nance are now se­cured, as we em­bark on a very ex­cit­ing jour­ney, with the de­ploy­ment of tech­no­log­i­cal hubs in Kobe, Japan, and Boston, MA, and the prospect of treat­ing our first pa­tients in 2024,” Alessan­dri said in a press re­lease.

As a part of the fi­nanc­ing round, Lau­rent Higueret of Bpifrance Large Ven­ture and Pe­ter Zip­pelius of Leonard Green & Part­ners will join the board of di­rec­tors. Girish Pendse of Bris­tol My­ers Squibb will join as an ob­serv­er.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Roger Perlmutter, Eikon Therapeutics CEO

Roger Perl­mut­ter builds Eikon's pipeline with deal-mak­ing flur­ry, rais­ing $106M more

Eikon Therapeutics announced three business development deals on Thursday, effectively dropping in a pipeline of cancer drugs alongside more than $100 million in fresh funding.

The Hayward, CA-based company has become one of biotech’s richest startups since its 2019 founding, having raised nearly $775 million. It’s developing a massive, automated research approach built around Nobel Prize-winning microscope science to peer inside cells and watch proteins in action. After its Series B last year, PitchBook reported a $3.02 billion valuation. And while CEO Roger Perlmutter declined to comment on that figure, he said its first tranche of nearly $106 million in Series C funding is a “meaningful step-up to our Series B valuation.”

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The Modulo Bio team with CEO Michael Horowitz (fourth from right in semicircle)

Ex­clu­sive: With $8M, neu­ro start­up Mod­u­lo Bio emerges to test small mol­e­cules for ALS, de­men­tia in CEO’s per­son­al mis­sion

Embarking on a personal mission after his best friend’s mother was diagnosed with a mutation-driven case of frontotemporal dementia, Michael Horowitz has pulled together $8 million in venture funding at Modulo Bio to create small molecules for neurodegenerative diseases.

The San Diego and Bay Area biotech will select its lead development candidate and some backup options within six months and then raise a Series A to investigate therapeutics for C9orf72 mutation-driven cases of ALS and frontotemporal dementia, Horowitz told Endpoints News.

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RA Cap­i­tal-backed non-vi­ral gene ther­a­py start­up Sum­ma­tion Bio to shut down

As a string of new gene therapy startups aims to create treatments without the go-to shuttling method of an AAV virus, and as multiple gene editing biotechs look to do the same, one such startup is coming to a close.

Summation Bio, backed by at least $24 million in Series A funds, is “terminating operations” next month, per an employee’s LinkedIn profile update. (According to their LinkedIn profile, an employee said the company raised $60 million in the round.) Another employee took to the networking site last week to say the circumstances were “insurmountable,” noting that “despite all-out effort and error-free execution, the science, this time, was elusive.”

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Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment calls mem­ber states to ac­tion on an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance

Members of the European Parliament have called on EU countries to develop national action plans against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), calling it a top-three priority health threat.

Parliament on Thursday announced recommendations for the fight against AMR, including national action plans that must be updated at least every two years, an EU-level database tracking AMR and antimicrobial use and increased partnership between the pharma industry, patient groups and academia.

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Roche plans to di­vest from lega­cy Genen­tech man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia

Roche is planning to make some changes to its subsidiary’s manufacturing network in California.

The Swiss pharma announced Wednesday that it plans to divest from Genentech’s manufacturing facility in Vacaville, CA, around 58 miles northeast of San Francisco. According to a statement from Roche, the move is part of a “broader strategy” to bring its manufacturing capabilities in line with its future pipeline. Roche is starting the process of finding a buyer for the site but has not named any candidates yet.

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Peter van de Sande, Synaffix CEO

Lon­za shells out $107M cash to snap up Synaf­fix and its ADC plat­form

After lining up a string of partnerships over the years, Dutch antibody-drug conjugate specialist Synaffix has found a new home: Lonza, the contract development and manufacturing giant.

Lonza is paying about $107 million (€100 million) in cash to acquire Synaffix, with up to $64 million (€60 million) in “additional performance-based consideration” on the table. Synaffix’s ADC tech platform will now become part of Lonza’s offering for biopharma clients, lending its bioconjugate technologies to not just ADCs but also targeted gene therapy, immune cell engagers and other applications.

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Who's con­fi­dent­ly in­vest­ing in biotech star­tups dur­ing these tense days? We've got some an­swers

We’ve got a changeup to our event schedule in Boston next week, where we’ll be doing a mix of live/streaming events at our base at The Seaport Hotel as part of a two-day lineup of webinars, virtual firesides and a cocktail hour Q&A with a veteran of the biotech financing scene.

The 9:30-10:30 am ET live slot on Tuesday, June 6, will now feature a panel conversation on the current state of affairs for VC investing in biotech, focusing on what startups are getting cash — and how. Alaa Halawa, head of US ventures at Mubadala, is confirmed, along with Brian Goodman at MPM and Geoff von Maltzahn, a general partner at Moderna-buoyed Flagship. I have a couple of other invites out and will let you know how that plays out.

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Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEO (Michel Euler/AP Images, Pool)

FDA ap­proves Pfiz­er’s RSV shot for old­er adults, tee­ing up a com­pet­i­tive $17B vac­cine mar­ket

The FDA approved Pfizer’s RSV vaccine called Abrysvo for older adults on Wednesday, placing another Big Pharma onto the commercial stage ahead of the next RSV season.

Pfizer’s approval comes weeks after GSK won approval for its rival shot, Arexvy. Those two vaccines are both approved for use in adults 60 years and older and will be reviewed by a CDC panel in June before they’re expected to commercially launch this fall. Wall Street analysts see RSV as the next multibillion-dollar vaccine market, with Jefferies analysts recently forecasting the RSV market will grow to $17 billion over the next decade.

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