GV backs new ge­nomics R&D up­start; Ver­tex ad­vances plans for next-gen CF drugs

GV — for­mer­ly known as Google Ven­tures — is join­ing a syn­di­cate pro­vid­ing a $40 mil­lion Se­ries A round to Dublin-based Ge­nomics Med­i­cine Ire­land. The com­pa­ny plans to build a world-class ge­nomics re­search ef­fort to bet­ter com­pre­hend dis­eases like Alzheimer’s. Arch and Po­laris are al­so back­ing the new com­pa­ny.

Ver­tex out­lined plans to ad­vance its next-gen cys­tic fi­bro­sis drugs in the clin­ic, adding a new pro­gram along the way, though some an­a­lysts raised con­cerns about their chances of suc­cess. From Ge­of­frey Porges: “The com­pa­ny’s triple de­vel­op­ment plans ini­tial­ly seemed straight­for­ward and en­cour­ag­ing but be­came in­creas­ing more com­pli­cat­ed dur­ing the con­fer­ence call. Man­age­ment an­nounced that both drugs in phase Ia would ad­vance to phase II, in both het-mins and ho­mozy­gous delF508’s, in sim­i­lar two-part triple com­bi­na­tion tri­als. In ex­plain­ing why they had cho­sen a mul­ti-part for­mat for each triple drug pro­gram, man­age­ment dis­closed that one of the two drugs had been as­so­ci­at­ed with sig­nif­i­cant GI ad­verse events (Vx152) at the high­er dos­es test­ed in phase Ia, while the oth­er drug was as­so­ci­at­ed with sig­nif­i­cant ter­ato­genic­i­ty risks from pre-clin­i­cal stud­ies (Vx440), thus re­strict­ing its use in women to those on “pre-spec­i­fied, non-hor­mon­al” con­tra­cep­tion. This com­pound ap­pears to be com­pli­cat­ed by the oc­cur­rence of liv­er en­zyme in­duc­tion, which im­pairs the ef­fec­tive­ness of hor­mon­al con­tra­cep­tion, and pre­sum­ably al­so has drug-drug in­ter­ac­tion is­sues with oth­er med­i­cines al­so pre­scribed to CF pa­tients.”

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