Raze Ther­a­peu­tics, the Cam­bridge start­up that launched in 2014 with $24 mil­lion in sup­port, is call­ing it quits.

The com­pa­ny was look­ing to ad­vance a new class of can­cer ther­a­peu­tics that tar­get key meta­bol­ic path­ways, but it ap­pears the sci­ence wasn’t quite ready for prime time.

Bruce Booth

Seed­ed in part by At­las Ven­ture, the com­pa­ny was fo­cused on can­cer an­a­bol­ic me­tab­o­lism, specif­i­cal­ly mi­to­chon­dr­i­al one-car­bon en­er­get­ics. The space has emerged re­cent­ly as a ma­jor dri­ver of can­cer pro­lif­er­a­tion, sur­vival, and bio­mass ac­cu­mu­la­tion. But ap­par­ent­ly the tech was too tough to con­tin­ue.

“Al­though it made in­trigu­ing progress, the un­der­ly­ing can­cer me­tab­o­lism bi­ol­o­gy was too com­pli­cat­ed to war­rant fur­ther in­vest­ment,” wrote Bruce Booth, part­ner at At­las, in a re­cent port­fo­lio up­date.

Such is life in biotech. Yet a new start­up has emerged in its place: Kyn Ther­a­peu­tics. Backed in part by At­las (and ex­plor­ing a sim­i­lar space), Kyn an­nounced a $49 mil­lion Se­ries A round this morn­ing. The com­pa­ny is led by a Raze’s for­mer CSO Mark Man­fre­di, an At­las en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence.

When asked what hap­pened at Raze, Man­fre­di said the com­pa­ny still had as­sets and col­lab­o­ra­tions, but no longer em­ployed any­one.

Pe­ter Bar­rett

The com­pa­ny was co-found­ed and led by At­las’ Pe­ter Bar­rett, and its sci­en­tif­ic founders in­clud­ed Vam­si Mootha (The Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute, Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal), Josh Ra­bi­nowitz (Prince­ton), and David Saba­ti­ni (White­head/MIT).

Ac­cord­ing to Booth, Raze’s sci­en­tif­ic as­sets went back in­to acad­e­mia for fur­ther ex­plo­ration.

With just days before President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 booster rollout is set to go into effect, an FDA advisory committee appeared on the verge of not recommending boosters for anyone in the US before a last-minute change of wording laid the groundwork for older adults to have access to a third dose.

The FDA’s adcomm on Vaccines and Related Biological Products (VRBPAC) roundly rejected Pfizer/BioNTech booster shots for all individuals older than 16 by a 16-2 vote Friday afternoon. Soon after, however, the agency posed committee members a new question limiting booster use to the 65-and-older population and individuals at high risk of disease due to occupational exposure or comorbidities.

AstraZeneca and Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo think they’ve struck gold with their next-gen ADC drug Enhertu, which has shown some striking data in late-stage breast cancer trials and early solid tumor tests. Getting into earlier patients is now the goal, starting with Enhertu’s complete walkover of a Roche drug in second-line breast cancer revealed Saturday.

Enhertu cut the risk of disease progression or death by a whopping 72% (p=<0.0001) compared with Roche’s ADC Kadcyla in second-line unresectable and/or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients who had previously undergone treatment with a Herceptin-chemo combo, according to interim data from the Phase III DESTINY-Breast03 head-to-head study presented at this weekend’s #ESMO21.

In recent months, the battle for PD-(L)1 dominance has spilled over into early cancer with Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo all alone on the front lines. Keytruda now has another shell in its bandolier, and it could spell a quick approval.

Keytruda cut the risk of relapse or death by 35% over placebo (p=0.00658) in high-risk, stage 2 melanoma patients who had previously undergone surgery to remove their tumors, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-716 presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Merck has worked hard to bring its I/O blockbuster Keytruda into earlier and earlier lines of therapy, and now the wonder drug appears poised to make a quick entry into early advanced cervical cancer.

A combination of Keytruda and chemotherapy with or without Roche’s Avastin cut the risk of death by 33% over chemo with or without Avastin (p=<0.001) in first-line patients with persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, according to full data from the Phase III KEYNOTE-826 study presented Saturday at #ESMO21.

Everest Medicines is on a roll with two licensing deals in one week.

The Shanghai-based biotech has paid Sinovent and SinoMab $12 million upfront for the rights to a BTK inhibitor for renal diseases, the company announced Thursday. The deal comes just days after Everest came away with rights to a Covid-19 vaccine in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

Everest will pay Sinovent and SinoMab up to $549 million in milestone payments and royalties. The agreement includes tech transfer of Sinovent and SinoMab’s manufacturing process for the candidate, named XNW1011.