Painting by the numbers, Sana founders carve up a giant unicorn-sized IPO — for a biotech that hasn’t quite made it to the clinic

Steve Harr (L) and Hans Bishop

January 13, 2021 04:14 PM ESTUpdated January 14, 07:12 AM

Financing

Painting by the numbers, Sana founders carve up a giant unicorn-sized IPO — for a biotech that hasn't quite made it to the clinic

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Sana Biotechnology is one of those startups that was sketched in on the chalkboard day one in the shape of a unicorn.

A giant unicorn.

And from the numbers the cell therapy 2.0 play spelled out in their S-1 $SANA, it’s clear that the company founders — led by a pair of major VCs aligned with some high-profile industry figures — are hunting a big chunk of that value for themselves.

The raise they penciled in — $150 million — isn’t likely what they actually have in mind, and it doesn’t do justice to the size of their ambitions.

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5AM Ventures: Fueling the Next Generation of Innovators

Brian Abrahams

Managing Director and Co-Head of Biotechnology Equity Research

By RBC Capital Markets
With Andy Schwab, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at 5AM Ventures

Key Points

Prescription Digital Therapeutics, cell therapy technologies, and in silico medicines will be a vital part of future treatment modalities.
Unlocking the potential of the microbiome could be the missing link to better disease diagnosis.
Growing links between academia, industry, and venture capital are spinning out more innovative biotech companies.
Biotech is now seen by investors as a growth space as well as a safe haven, fuelling the recent IPO boom.

Janet Woodcock (AP Images)

January 21, 2021 07:49 AM ESTUpdated 08:04 AM

People

Regulatory

Endpoints poll: Janet Woodcock takes the (interim) helm at the FDA. And a large majority of our readers want her to stay there

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

It’s official: Janet Woodcock is now the acting chief of the FDA.

And — according to an Endpoints poll — most industry readers would like her to stay there, although a significant minority is strongly opposed.

To recap: Joe Biden is reportedly choosing between Woodcock and former deputy FDA commissioner Joshua Sharfstein as his nominee for the permanent position. Given their respective track records, the decision is set to determine the agency’s lodestar for years to come.

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An Endpoints Zoom meeting; and the email header employees will see if your company is a Premium subscriber

January 21, 2021 07:01 AM ESTUpdated 10:11 AM

Publisher's note

What’s next for Endpoints — and how to support our independent biopharma news mission

Arsalan Arif

Publisher & Founder

The firehose of biopharma news is gushing these days.

That’s why broader and deeper is the theme for 2021 at Endpoints. You can expect new coverage outside our core R&D focus, with deeper reporting in some key areas. When John Carroll and I launched Endpoints nearly five years ago, we were wading in waist-high waters. Now we’re a team of 25 full-time staffers (and growing) with plans to cover the flood of biopharma news, Endpoints-style.

Northway Biotech's new manufacturing facility in Greater Boston

January 21, 2021 10:24 AM EST

Manufacturing

Northway Biotech sets up shop in Boston hub, looking to court more customers with biologics-focused plant

Conner Mitchell

Associate Editor

Getting a foot in the door in Boston’s bustling biopharma hub is a rite of passage for many companies, but it comes with a steep price tag. Lithuanian CDMO Northway — now with a new moniker — will set up a new plant in close proximity, and it’s hoping its biologics focus will find a willing customer base.

Northway Biotech (formerly Northway Biotechpharma) on Wednesday held a virtual grand opening ceremony for its $40 million Waltham, MA facility — a 30,000 square-foot cGMP manufacturing and process development plant that will widely expand on the company’s previous capabilities.

January 21, 2021 10:23 AM EST

News Briefing

News briefing: Five public biotechs, over 2 days, raise $883M from fresh offerings; Belgian biotech expands Series B funding

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Conner Mitchell

Associate Editor

The wave of biotech IPOs we’ve been seeing in the last few days underscores that the public markets remain one of the key channels for fresh investments in drug R&D. And that trend was in full view this week as a slate of biotechs nailed down hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh funds.

One of the big winners of the week is Editas $EDIT, which nailed $231 million to back its pioneering work on a gene editing platform. The biotech sold 3.5 million shares at $66 each.

Mike Grey, Plexium chairman (Horizon Therapeutics)

January 21, 2021 08:00 AM EST

Financing

Plexium adds industry vet Mike Grey to the brain trust with new investor cash funding its protein degradation play

Max Gelman

Associate Editor

About 15 months since closing a $28 million Series A, a San Diego protein-degradation upstart returned to the venture well Thursday with an extension of that round and some new hires, including one of the city’s best-connected biotech execs.

Plexium has bagged an additional $35 million in financing, the biotech said, money that will push undisclosed oncology and immuno-oncology programs into the clinic. In addition, longtime industry vet Mike Grey is jumping on as chairman of the board, and two others from Thursday’s leads — Adam Goulburn from Lux Capital and Rob Hopfner from Pivotal BioVentures — joined the board too.

January 21, 2021 08:00 AM EST

R&D

Coronavirus

Eli Lilly's antibody cuts risk of Covid-19 by up to 80% among the most vulnerable — but will it have a place next to vaccines?

Amber Tong

Senior Editor

Eli Lilly says bamlanivimab lowered the risk of contracting symptomatic Covid-19 in a first-of-its-kind trial involving nursing home residents and staff, paving the way for a new option to protect against the virus.

But how big of an impact it might have, and what role it will play, at a time vaccines are being rolled out to the exact population it is targeting still remains unclear.

Among 965 participants in the study — all of whom tested negative for the coronavirus at baseline — the number of symptomatic cases reported in the bamlanivimab arm was 57% lower than that in the placebo arm (odds ratio 0.43, p=0.00021). In addition to that primary endpoint, all secondary endpoints reached statistical significance.

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Hal Barron, GSK R&D chief (GSK via YouTube)

January 20, 2021 08:48 AM ESTUpdated 10:39 AM

R&D

GlaxoSmithKline's $4B bispecific cancer drug alliance with Merck KGaA hit by big setback with a PhIII failure on NSCLC

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Close to 2 years ago, GSK’s R&D team eagerly agreed to pay up to $4 billion-plus to ally itself with Merck KGaA on a mid-stage bispecific called bintrafusp alfa, which intrigued them with the combination of a TGF-β trap with the anti-PD-L1 mechanism in one fusion protein.

But today the German pharma company says that their lead study on lung cancer was a bust, as independent monitors said there was no reason to believe that the experimental drug — targeting PD-L1/TGF-Beta — could beat Keytruda.

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Biohaven CEO Vlad Coric (Photo Credit: Andrew Venditti)

January 18, 2021 11:48 AM ESTUpdated January 19, 07:20 AM

Bioregnum

Pssst: That big Biohaven Alzheimer's study? It was a bust. Even the subgroup analysis execs touted was a flop

You know it’s bad when a biopharma player plucks out a subgroup analysis for a positive take — even though it was way off the statistical mark for success, like everything else.

So it was for Biohaven $BHVN on MLK Monday, as the biotech reported on the holiday that their Phase II/III Alzheimer’s study for troriluzole flunked both co-primary endpoints as well as a key biomarker analysis.

The drug — a revised version of the ALS drug riluzole designed to regulate glutamate — did not “statistically differentiate” from placebo on the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale 11 (ADAS-cog) and the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale Sum of Boxes (CDR-SB). The “hippocampal volume” assessment by MRI also failed to distinguish itself from placebo for all patients fitting the mild-to-moderate disease profile they had established for the study.

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