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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