Leap of faith? Buzzy an­ti-ag­ing biotech Uni­ty pitch­es an $85M IPO based on mouse da­ta

Can an old mouse that looks and acts youth­ful and vir­ile in­spire in­vestors to back an $85 mil­lion IPO?

Uni­ty Biotech­nol­o­gy is about to find out.

Bob Nelsen

One of the buzzi­est of the new breed of biotech, backed by Bob Nelsen at Arch, Uni­ty raised $217 mil­lion in ven­ture fund­ing for its pre­clin­i­cal work on rid­ding bod­ies of senes­cent cells. These old­ster cells tend to clut­ter sys­tems in peo­ple as they age, and Uni­ty’s the­o­ry — on­ly stud­ied in mice — sup­ports the idea that sweep­ing away the cel­lu­lar dust could help sus­tain a longer, health­i­er life.

Just weeks ago the com­pa­ny said they were ready to start their first hu­man study on os­teoarthri­tis, and their S-1 spells out a pipeline full of plans to try out their ideas in the clin­ic.

Arch is still the largest in­vestor, with 27.5% of the eq­ui­ty. WuXi Phar­maT­e­ch comes in sec­ond with 8.9%. And Ven­rock, the Mayo Clin­ic, Bail­lie Gif­ford and Fi­deli­ty al­so have a piece. The com­pa­ny plans to trade as $UBX.

The of­fer­ing in­cludes a grand mis­sion state­ment:

We be­lieve that by cre­at­ing med­i­cines that tar­get fun­da­men­tal ag­ing mech­a­nisms, we can re­duce the eco­nom­ic, per­son­al, and so­ci­etal bur­den of ag­ing and en­hance qual­i­ty of life.

Kei­th Leonard, Uni­ty CEO

The S-1 al­so un­der­scores, per­haps un­in­ten­tion­al­ly, the ex­tra­or­di­nary risks ahead. It out­lines some of the drugs that have been tout­ed for their an­ti-ag­ing po­ten­tial, not­ing the prob­lems on each. There’s been much dis­cus­sion but lit­tle hard ev­i­dence that drugs like ra­pamycin, a pow­er­ful im­muno­sup­pres­sant, or resver­a­trol, a com­po­nent of red wine that in­spired a $720 mil­lion buy­out by GSK that led nowhere, could ad­dress ag­ing. And the mech­a­nisms of ac­tion for much-dis­cussed drugs like met­formin are poor­ly un­der­stood. 

The biotech has burned through more than $87 mil­lion of pri­vate funds to gath­er to­geth­er its pre­clin­i­cal case. Now Uni­ty will test just how much mon­ey the pub­lic mar­kets is will­ing to of­fer pre­clin­i­cal com­pa­nies that have set out on biotech mis­sions to achieve life-al­ter­ing goals.

It’s a leap of faith over a broad chasm of risk. 

Roger Perl­mut­ter lines up deals, fresh fund­ing at Eikon; Sec­ond RSV vac­cine ap­proved; Sev­er­al biotechs flash­ing red; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

As you come back to our website this weekend for ASCO news, don’t forget to check out our updated event lineup at BIO, which will cover everything from the current state of VC investing in biotech to top pharma R&D chiefs discussing how to make pipeline decisions.

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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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Grail’s blood test charts path for di­ag­nos­ing pa­tients sus­pect­ed of hav­ing can­cer in large study: #AS­CO23

Grail’s vision is simple but bold. The blood testing company has long held that people are often diagnosed with cancer too late. If seemingly healthy people were screened for early signs of the disease before symptoms appear, they may be able to get more effective treatments that nip cancer in the bud.

That premise is the basis of Grail’s commercial blood test, Galleri, which searches for the genetic fingerprints of cancer in the blood. The test, launched in 2021, reaped $55 million in sales last year, but now the company is setting its sights on a new market: patients suspected of having cancer due to symptoms such as abdominal pain, rectal bleeding or unexplained weight loss. Rather than administering expensive scans or conducting invasive biopsies right away, Grail hopes doctors will consider a simple blood test.

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Bala Venkataraman, Avego founder and managing partner (L), and Bruno Paquin, AtomVie CEO

Cana­di­an CD­MO se­cures more fund­ing to get its man­u­fac­tur­ing site up and run­ning

AtomVie Global Radiopharma Inc, a Canadian radiopharmaceutical contract manufacturer, has received additional funds to get its manufacturing facility up and running.

The manufacturer announced that it has raised an additional 90 million Canadian dollars ($66.9 million) in a “Tranche 2 Series A round,” led by the healthcare investment firm Avego Management. The company previously announced a $40 million Series A round last year, which contributed to the construction of a new 64,000-square-foot facility.

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GSK pro­motes rou­tine im­mu­niza­tions for adults amid post-pan­dem­ic vac­cine back­slide

GSK launched a new initiative on Thursday and committed up to $1 million in grant funding to improve adult routine vaccination rates.

While the pandemic spotlight was trained on the race for novel Covid-19 vaccines, other routine vaccination rates plummeted, raising concerns that missed doses may put children and even some adults at risk of preventable diseases such as measles or shingles. The World Health Organization last year reported the largest drop in childhood vaccinations in roughly three decades.

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Tammie Denyse speaks up about Black women and breast cancer inequity in Gilead's first TikTok campaign. (Gilead Sciences)

Gilead joins Tik­Tok with on­col­o­gy aware­ness cam­paign fea­tur­ing di­verse group of can­cer ad­vo­cates

Gilead Sciences is taking over the opening page on TikTok for the next two weeks. A Gilead-sponsored video, featuring cancer advocates talking about equity and other issues, will show up as the landing page, called the “For You” page, for millions of TikTok watchers.

The cancer awareness campaign will begin on Monday and run for two weeks, a Gilead spokesperson told Endpoints News. The TikTok ad debut is timed around the ASCO medical conference, but the work is aimed more broadly at healthcare professionals, as well as people touched by cancer and people interested in advancing Black and general health equity.

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Dol­lars flow with three new pub­lic of­fer­ings, two pri­vate place­ments

A handful of biotechs announced plans to raise money this week.

First up is Hookipa Pharma, which announced Wednesday night that it is looking to raise $50 million in gross earnings in a public offering — by selling 22.9 million shares of common stock at $1.31 a share. The biotech, which is developing immuno-oncology treatments and infectious disease programs, is also offering roughly 15,000 shares of non-voting preferred stock, which could be converted into 1,000 shares of common stock for a price of $1,310 each.

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