Har­vard biotech wiz Greg Ver­dine grabs a $55M A round to build a ground­break­ing biotech

It’s hard not to en­joy talk­ing with Greg Ver­dine about the new biotech com­pa­nies he sets up. Years of teach­ing at Har­vard have honed his skill for trans­lat­ing sci­ence in­to a pithy set of sto­ries that every­one can un­der­stand and get a kick out of.

“What I am re­al­ly pas­sion­ate about is dis­cov­er­ing new types of mol­e­cules that do things that can’t be done by stan­dard small mol­e­cules and an­ti­bod­ies,” he told me in the lead-up to to­day’s for­mal launch of LifeM­ine Ther­a­peu­tics with a $55 mil­lion A round. “I want to go af­ter un­drug­gable tar­gets, get drugs that peo­ple con­sid­er now aren’t doable. The ques­tion is where you go look­ing for this.”

Greg Ver­dine

The an­swer for Ver­dine, this time, is fun­gi.

“Fun­gi have been duk­ing it out with their neigh­bors in the soil for a bil­lion years,” says Ver­dine, “steal­ing the lunch of their cowork­ers, com­pet­ing, and fend­ing off in­vaders us­ing small mol­e­cules as com­pet­i­tive sub­stances.” And it all fits very close­ly with hu­man pro­teins, giv­ing it a good shot at work­ing in hu­mans.

It helps that evo­lu­tion doesn’t obey the same rules that guide med­i­c­i­nal chemists, and now Ver­dine’s new com­pa­ny will re­ly on se­quenc­ing to fol­low this strange path in search of some rad­i­cal new break­throughs in can­cer — a field that has at­tract­ed bil­lions of dol­lars to back a new gen­er­a­tion of ther­a­pies.

To do this, he says, the team has to “grow up fun­gi in­di­vid­u­al­ly, iso­late DNA and se­quence the DNA. Take the DNA and an­a­lyze it for biosyn­thet­ic gene clus­ters; an in­struc­tion set to make a nat­ur­al prod­uct.”

Ver­dine blends mul­ti­ple roles in biotech: Pro­fes­sor, ven­ture part­ner at WuXi Health­care Ven­tures — which seed­ed this new start­up — and now a dou­ble CEO, with his dual role run­ning Fog Phar­ma made eas­i­er by hav­ing both com­pa­nies housed in the same build­ing in Cam­bridge, MA.

Over the years Ver­dine has been one of the most pro­lif­ic start­up artists in the busi­ness, a go-to fig­ure in the in­dus­try who’s helped kick a slate of biotechs in­to ex­is­tence, rang­ing from Enan­ta to Tokai, Aileron and Warp Dri­ve Bio, which he al­so helmed for a time.

Right now the team at LifeM­ine is made up of a dozen sci­en­tists and five DNA spe­cial­ists, where they are fo­cus­ing on pro­grams and tar­gets for the pipeline as they build the plat­form along the way. By mid-2019, Ver­dine ex­pects the crew to ex­pand to about 40 staffers.

It’s still ear­ly days, though.

“We’ve left our­selves 3.5 years to en­ter the clin­ic,” says Ver­dine.

That re­quires some very pa­tient mon­ey, which Ver­dine lined up from WuXi Health­care Ven­tures with a syn­di­cate that in­cludes Fore­site Cap­i­tal, Google Ven­tures (or GV, with Kr­ish­na Yesh­want join­ing the board), Arch Ven­ture Part­ners, Boyu Cap­i­tal, Blue Pool Cap­i­tal, MRL Ven­tures Fund, and Alexan­dria Ven­ture In­vest­ments.

Those blue chip VC names are mix­ing with some mon­ey out of two promi­nent Chi­nese in­vestors, aside from the transpa­cif­ic WuXi op­er­a­tion: Boyu — an in­flu­en­tial pri­vate eq­ui­ty group led by co-founder and part­ner Sean Tong — and Blue Pool.

At this stage of his life, Ver­dine is po­si­tioned at ex­act­ly the right place, and ex­act­ly the right time, for a pricey space shot in­to the biotech uni­verse. The stars have aligned — again.

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.

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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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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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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San­doz plans to stay lo­cal af­ter No­var­tis sep­a­ra­tion, se­lect­ing new HQ in Basel

Sandoz, a generics maker that Novartis plans to spin off later this year, has picked its new headquarters — and it’s only 2.4 miles away from its current digs on the Novartis campus.

The Novartis unit said Thursday that it plans to move to an office building in Basel called Elsässertor sometime in mid-2024.

Sandoz CEO Richard Saynor said in a news release that the location in the heart of Basel “will allow us to create a working environment that meets our business needs,” citing the talent pool in the Swiss city. Sandoz added that the workspace is designed to allow for “closer collaboration and teamwork.”

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Bausch + Lomb to pro­mote three SVPs to ex­ec­u­tive team

Bausch + Lomb is making more executive change-ups, including the promotion of three of its senior VPs that will report directly to CEO Brent Saunders.

Earlier this year, Saunders returned to lead Bausch + Lomb and its roughly 12,000 employees after originally running the company from 2010 to 2013.

Bausch + Lomb said Thursday that Luc Bonnefoy, John Ferris and Yang Yang — the leaders of its surgical, consumer and vision care businesses, respectively — will join the executive management team and report directly to Saunders. It also said that Joseph Gordon, head of global consumer, surgical and vision care, is now a strategic advisor to Saunders.

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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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Far­al­lon says it's won all de­sired board seats from Ex­elix­is af­ter share­hold­er vote

Less than two months after Farallon Capital Management launched a proxy fight to gain control of three seats on cancer biotech Exelixis’ board, it got what it wanted at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

The hedge fund said Wednesday that preliminary results at Exelixis’ annual shareholder meeting elected all three of Farallon’s candidates to the board: Tom Heyman, Dave Johnson and Bob Oliver.

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