Frank Nes­tle was ap­point­ed Sanofi’s glob­al head of im­munol­o­gy and in­flam­ma­tion re­search ther­a­peu­tic area just days be­fore dupilum­ab, the block­buster-to-be IL-4 an­ti­body, would be ac­cept­ed for pri­or­i­ty re­view. Af­ter four years of con­sol­i­dat­ing im­munol­o­gy ex­per­tise from mul­ti­ple cor­ners of the Sanofi fam­i­ly and re­cruit­ing new tal­ents to build the dis­cov­ery en­gine, he’s set eyes on a Phase I-ready pro­gram that he be­lieves can grow in­to a Dupix­ent-sized fran­chise.

Frank Nes­tle

And — with the bless­ing of CEO Paul Hud­son and R&D chief John Reed — he’s reach­ing deep in­to the purse.

IRAK4 is the head­lin­er for the col­lab­o­ra­tion with the pro­tein degra­da­tion spe­cial­ists at Kymera, which is bag­ging $150 mil­lion cash and $2 bil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stones. The Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech is tasked with com­plet­ing first-in-hu­man stud­ies and re­tains the op­tion to share US de­vel­op­ment costs and rev­enue fol­low­ing the Sanofi-led Phase II.

The tar­get sits down­stream of “one of the most val­i­dat­ed path­ways in in­nate im­mu­ni­ty,” Kymera CEO Nel­lo Main­olfi said: It’s where the IL-1 cy­tokine fam­i­ly (think IL-1, IL-33, IL-36) and toll-like re­cep­tor sig­nal­ing con­verges. While ki­nase in­hibitors can take out the ki­nase func­tion, it al­so has a scaf­fold­ing func­tion which con­tin­ues to en­able sig­nal­ing.

“In or­der to ful­ly block the sig­nal­ing, you need to re­move IRAK4,” he said.

Lever­ag­ing E3 lig­as­es to tag the tar­get pro­tein for dis­pos­al, Kymera’s de­grad­er promis­es to pack the bi­o­log­i­cal ef­fect of block­ing all cy­tokine sig­nal­ing with a sin­gle oral pill.

Be­cause it sits at a crit­i­cal node, IRAK4 has been on Sanofi’s radar screen, Nes­tle said. They are al­so well aware of the in­ad­e­qua­cies of a small mol­e­cule ap­proach — such as the one tak­en by Pfiz­er.

“At the mo­ment a lot of pro­tein degra­da­tion is in can­cer, and there’s noth­ing yet in the chron­ic in­flam­ma­to­ry dis­ease space,” he said. “As far as I’m aware, there’s no oth­er com­pa­ny out there who we could have part­nered with to ex­act­ly get to that point.”

While the po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tions are broad, der­ma­tol­ogy looms large among the ini­tial plans. There’s atopic der­mati­tis, the itchy skin con­di­tion that ac­counts for a large por­tion of Dupix­ent’s $2.32 bil­lion an­nu­al sales. Nes­tle is al­so keen on hidradeni­tis sup­pu­ra­ti­va, which can cause long-term ab­scess­es and scar­ring.

Sanofi first added pro­tein degra­da­tion to its R&D play­book in Jan­u­ary, anti­ng up $55 mil­lion up­front to ac­cess Nurix Ther­a­peu­tics’ can­cer drug plat­form. The sub­se­quent months have proven to be boom times for the pro­tein degra­da­tion field, as Roche wad­ed in­to the race, a pi­o­neer biotech loaded up and more new play­ers emerged.

Kymera it­self raised $102 mil­lion dur­ing this time, ush­er­ing the IRAK4 pro­gram and an­oth­er tar­get­ing STAT3 to­ward the clin­ic — for both in­flam­ma­tion/im­munol­o­gy and on­col­o­gy.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly when you’re work­ing out­side of tar­get­ed on­col­o­gy, you ac­tu­al­ly bring a lot more com­plex­i­ty giv­en that you’re go­ing af­ter a va­ri­ety of cell pop­u­la­tion and not just the one can­cer cell pop­u­la­tion,” Main­olfi said.

But just like their re­search blue­print­ing a E3 lig­ase whole body at­las, the CTO-turned-CEO sees it as es­sen­tial in­vest­ment to cre­ate a lead­ing, ful­ly in­te­grat­ed pro­tein degra­da­tion-fo­cused com­pa­ny. He’s al­so look­ing to add some­where be­tween 20 and 40 staffers to the 60-strong team with­in the next six months or so.

For Sanofi, it’s a bet that aligns well with a new­ly re­vamped R&D struc­ture where spe­cial­i­ty care and vac­cines take cen­ter stage.

“We’re com­ing from where there was not a lot of im­munol­o­gy, but we’ve built a high qual­i­ty team and that doesn’t mean we have the not in­vent­ed here syn­drome. If we see a great com­pound, a great col­lab­o­ra­tion with some of the best in the in­dus­try like Kymera, we go for it,” he said. “As you know, phar­ma can be a slow mov­ing train, so we’re build­ing this foun­da­tion but once the foun­da­tion is built, there’s one clin­i­cal can­di­date af­ter an­oth­er which is go­ing to come in­to the im­munol­o­gy/in­flam­ma­tion space.”

A small, Santa Ana-based biotech created in 2017 is looking to enter a SPAC deal as it lays out plans to begin trials in its lead cell therapy candidates and bring on new executives.

Graf Acquisition Corp. IV and NKGen Biotech announced Thursday, with few other details, that the two companies signed a non-binding letter of intent to “pursue a business combination.” Graf Acquisition II and III withdrew their IPOs last year.

The FDA has rejected Incyte’s extended-release formulation of ruxolitinib tablets, in a surprise setback for the company’s plans to build on its blockbuster Jakafi franchise.

The ruxolitinib XR tablets are designed to be taken once a day, whereas Jakafi is indicated for twice daily dosage (although some patients can take it once daily).

According to Incyte, the FDA acknowledged in its complete response letter that the study submitted in the NDA “met its objective of bioequivalence based on area under the curve (AUC) parameters but identified additional requirements for approval.”