Novartis bet $6B on the idea — now Versant, venBio have $45M to birth a platform play for radiopharmaceuticals
Back in 2017, in the wake of back-to-back setbacks and a reorganization, a struggling little biotech named Endocyte completed a $12 million licensing deal that would ultimately put it on a path toward a $2.1 billion buyout.
As it turned out, Versant Ventures was also eyeing that very same drug out of Germany: PSMA-617, a radioligand therapeutic for castration-resistant prostate cancer.
“We actually put a term sheet out on that asset because we just thought the efficacy data were so profound there,” managing director Jerel Davis told Endpoints News, referring to a drug that registered a progression-free survival rate of 7.6 months among PSMA-positive patients, with one cohort hitting an overall survival rate of 13.5 months.
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