Go­ing big: Biotech vets blast off with Ar­rakis on a new jour­ney of RNA ex­plo­ration


Michael Gilman and an ex­pe­ri­enced band of biotech vets are bust­ing out of stealth mode to­day with a start­up that marks the se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur’s third launch in 10 years. And he’s com­ing out in style, with a $38 mil­lion A round led by Canaan Part­ners.

Af­ter lit­er­al­ly stum­bling across the com­pa­ny while it was still in the white-board phase of de­vel­op­ment in 2015, Gilman says he was ripe for the chal­lenge and ad­ven­ture. And it’s a big one.

CSO and founder Russ Pet­ter has been hon­ing the bioin­for­mat­ics tools, as­says and chem­i­cal li­braries Ar­rakis Ther­a­peu­tics will need to cre­ate a plat­form tech­nol­o­gy that can be used to de­vel­op small mol­e­cules to in­hib­it dis­ease-caus­ing RNA.

This biotech has a long jour­ney ahead in pre­clin­i­cal work be­fore it can start try­ing this out in hu­mans. But if they’re right, the com­pa­ny will be on their way to work­ing on oral ther­a­pies that would be able to hunt down a host of what had been con­sid­ered un­drug­gable tar­gets — start­ing with an ini­tial aim at neu­rol­o­gy and can­cer.

Most pre­clin­i­cal star­tups like this come out of acad­e­mia. But this is a unique­ly Cam­bridge-based out­fit, bring­ing to­geth­er peo­ple with decades of ex­pe­ri­ence right in the heart of one of the world’s biggest biotech hubs.

“I’ve known Russ for a long time,” says Gilman, whose CV in­ter­sects with the founder’s stint at Bio­gen. “He ran chem­istry when I ran re­search there. He’s been work­ing on this for awhile.”

And Pet­ters isn’t the on­ly oth­er Bio­gen vet on board. Chief Busi­ness Of­fi­cer Daniel Ko­er­w­er and James Bar­soum, SVP of bi­ol­o­gy, al­so trace their ca­reers back to the Cam­bridge, MA gi­ant. Col­lec­tive­ly, they list stints at more than a dozen dif­fer­ent biotech com­pa­nies on their re­sumes.

Gilman crossed paths with Pet­ter in 2015, when the fel­low sci­en­tist was hatch­ing his plans for Ar­rakis — a com­pa­ny named af­ter the plan­et in Frank Her­bert’s Dune — in some shared of­fice space where Gilman had one of his board meet­ings. Pet­ter had had his in­ter­est whet­ted at a con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tion on small mol­e­cules and RNA in­ter­ac­tions.

They talked, Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb de­cid­ed it would pay a hand­some price for Gilman’s last com­pa­ny, Pad­lock, and af­ter tak­ing last sum­mer off, they got down to se­ri­ous­ly ex­plor­ing the idea to­geth­er.

The mon­ey fol­lowed the ideas.

Along with Canaan Part­ners, Ad­vent Life Sci­ences, Pfiz­er, Cel­gene, Os­age Uni­ver­si­ty Part­ners, and biotech in­dus­try leader Hen­ri Ter­meer chipped in to the A round. The UK’s Ad­vent and Ter­meer helped seed the ini­tial work. And if Ar­rakis’ team is right, there will be plen­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ties along the way to set up plat­form col­lab­o­ra­tions and part­ner­ships.

Colleen Cuf­faro

“I was very in­trigued from the minute I heard the con­cept,” says Colleen Cuf­faro, a prin­ci­pal at Canaan who’s tak­ing a board spot at Ar­rakis.  “It has enor­mous po­ten­tial, how it opens up a whole new space for un­drug­gable tar­gets on our radar for a long time. I re­al­ly like the ap­proach of us­ing small mol­e­cules that are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent than any oth­er RNA-tar­get­ing ap­proach I’ve seen. The oth­er piece was the team, a re­al­ly proven team, with a track record that is out­stand­ing.”

Gilman isn’t con­cen­trat­ing sole­ly on Ar­rakis. He’s been deeply in­volved with At­las Ven­ture, and they’re plan­ning an­oth­er com­pa­ny launch lat­er in the year. But Gilman isn’t stressed by the idea of helm­ing two ven­tures at once.

At Pad­lock, says Gilman, “I felt like I had ex­tra time on my hands.” Af­ter all, CEOs of star­tups of­ten “spend a lot of time wait­ing around for stuff to hap­pen.” And if you have the kind of team he’s work­ing with at Ar­rakis, it’s not a full-time job.

This is not Gilman’s first biotech rodeo. He knows first hand that a ven­ture-backed start­up of­ten lands in oth­er hands, as hap­pened with Stromedix and Pad­lock. This time around though, he would like to take it all out much fur­ther.

“You can nev­er rule it out,” he says, “but this is a com­pa­ny I would like to see built for the long haul. I tru­ly be­lieve we’ll have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to crank out new drugs oth­er peo­ple haven’t been able to make.”

Gilman’s a long­time be­liev­er in the adage that in biotech, you should go big or go home.

Once again, he’s go­ing big.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

Alaa Halawaa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

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Flare Therapeutics biochemists Yong Li (L) and Valerie Vivat

A $123M Flare will get Third Rock on­col­o­gy biotech in­to the clin­ic this year

Flare Therapeutics will start its first human trial this year with an investigational urothelial cancer drug after pulling together a $123 million Series B from Big Pharmas, VCs and its incubator, Third Rock Ventures.

Launched in 2021 on the idea that a biotech could finally succeed at drugging the much-sought-after but stubborn transcription factor, Flare Therapeutics said Wednesday it is now primed for the clinic after closing its large financing haul earlier this year. The raise is a relatively stark figure in a tough startup financing environment but further buoys the upbeat signals coming out of other Third Rock biotechs in recent weeks, including the $200 million CARGO Therapeutics and $100 million Rapport Therapeutics rounds.

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Francesco Marincola, newly-appointed Sonata Therapeutics CSO

Kite's head of re­search leaves for Flag­ship start­up Sonata

Another leader is departing Kite Pharma, and will to spend the “last part” of his career exploring how cancer evades the immune system.

Kite’s senior VP and global head of cell therapy research Francesco Marincola left the Gilead CAR-T unit last week for Sonata Therapeutics. Flagship last May unveiled the startup, which was pieced together from two fledgling biotechs Inzen and Cygnal Therapeutics. As CSO, Marincola will lead Sonata’s push to reprogram cancer cells to make them more immunogenic.

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Rohan Palekar, 89bio CEO

89bio’s PhII da­ta add to quick suc­ces­sion of NASH read­outs as field seeks turn­around

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

Josep Bassaganya-Riera, NImmune Biopharma

Ex­clu­sive: Af­ter get­ting his drug back, Lan­dos founder as­sem­bles new start­up for the big PhI­II test

By the time Josep Bassaganya-Riera stepped down as founding CEO of Landos Biopharma in 2021, the company had racked up Phase II data for its top autoimmune program, completed what he called a positive end-of-Phase-II meeting with the FDA and plans to launch pivotal Phase III trials.

Since then, though, the new leaders at Landos have reshuffled their plans for the drug, omilancor, first announcing they will run a Phase IIb ahead of a Phase III and eventually shelving it altogether.

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FDA in­di­cates will­ing­ness to ap­prove Bio­gen ALS drug de­spite failed PhI­II study

Ahead of Wednesday’s advisory committee hearing to discuss Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen, the FDA appeared open to approving the drug, newly released briefing documents show.

Citing the need for flexibility in a devastating disease like ALS, regulators signaled a willingness to consider greenlighting tofersen based on its effect on a certain protein associated with ALS despite a failed pivotal trial. The documents come after regulatory flexibility was part of the same rationale the agency expressed when approving an ALS drug last September from Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, indicating the FDA’s openness to approving new treatments for the disease.

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Roche and Lil­ly team up to de­vel­op blood test to de­tect ear­ly signs of Alzheimer's

Eli Lilly is teaming up with Roche to help develop a blood test to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and determine whether a patient should go for further confirmatory testing.

Roche’s Elecsys Amyloid Plasma Panel (EAPP) measures pTau 181 protein assay and APOE E4 assay in human blood plasma – elevations in pTau 181 are present in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, while the presence of APO E4 is the most common genetic risk factor for the disease.

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NIH re­jects an­oth­er at­tempt to 'march-in' on Astel­las' prostate can­cer drug over ex­ces­sive price

The National Institutes of Health has again declined to use so-called “march-in” rights to lower the price of Astellas and Pfizer’s prostate cancer drug Xtandi despite being invented at UCLA with grants from the US Army and NIH.

“Given the remaining patent life and the lengthy administrative process involved for a march-in proceeding, NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug,” NIH told prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs and Clare Love, in a letter shared with Endpoints News. The institutes’ analyses found Xtandi “to be widely available to the public,” an indication that there was not a pressing need for the US to act.