Mon­ey has nev­er been an is­sue for Ever­est Med­i­cines. With an es­sen­tial­ly open tab from their founders at C-Bridge Cap­i­tal, the biotech has gone two and a half years rack­ing up drug af­ter drug, bring­ing in top ex­ec af­ter top ex­ec, and is­su­ing clin­i­cal up­date af­ter up­date.

But now oth­er in­vestors want in — and they’re bet­ting big.

Ian Woo

Ever­est is clos­ing its Se­ries C at $310 mil­lion. The first $50 mil­lion comes from the Ji­ashan Na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic and Tech­no­log­i­cal De­vel­op­ment Zone; the re­main­ing C-2 tranche was led by Jan­chor Part­ners, with RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and Hill­house Cap­i­tal as co-lead­ers. Decheng Cap­i­tal, GT Fund, Janus Hen­der­son In­vestors, Rock Springs Cap­i­tal, Oc­ta­gon In­vest­ments all joined.

The biotech might be best known for pay­ing $65 mil­lion up­front to grab Asian rights to Im­munomedics’ an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate last April — a record for Chi­nese biotechs in-li­cens­ing West­ern drugs. But the oth­er as­sets in their pipeline would ring equal­ly, if not more, fa­mil­iar to a US au­di­ence: Are­na’s S1P re­cep­tor ag­o­nist etrasi­mod, Unit­ed Ther­a­peu­tics’ PAH drug ra­linepag, Tetraphase an­tibi­ot­ic Xer­a­va (er­ava­cy­cline), among oth­ers.

The idea, CFO Ian Woo pre­vi­ous­ly told End­points News, is to go for the crown jew­els of their biotech part­ners — and not the un­want­ed, shelved prod­ucts.

That ap­proach re­quires earn­ing the trust of part­ners, some­thing Ever­est has honed af­ter eight such deals.

Wende Chen

Pi­o­neered by the likes of Zai Lab and BeiGene, bridg­ing the med­ical gap be­tween the US and Chi­na has be­come a pop­u­lar strat­e­gy for do­mes­tic biotechs. Ever­est po­si­tioned it­self right up there with the lead­ers, in­clud­ing CStone and In­novent. The mar­ket’s big enough for al­most every­body with the ex­per­tise to iden­ti­fy the right in­di­ca­tions and pur­sue the op­ti­mal clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment path, they con­tend.

“We are well-po­si­tioned to ad­vance the clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of our ro­bust ther­a­peu­tics pipeline, which spans a num­ber of im­por­tant dis­eases, and we look for­ward to build­ing a strong foun­da­tion on which we will grow our com­mer­cial busi­ness,” said Ker­ry Blan­chard, the Eli Lil­ly vet who was ap­point­ed CEO ear­li­er this year.

He is flanked in the C-suite by Ian Woo, pres­i­dent and CFO; and Wende Chen, chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer.

Two of the drugs Ever­est holds rights to have been ap­proved in the US. Im­munomedics’ breast can­cer ther­a­py Trodelvy was OK’d in April, trig­ger­ing $60 mil­lion in mile­stone pay­ment, and Ever­est was cleared for Chi­na tri­als that month. Around the same time, they nabbed ap­proval for an­oth­er, Xer­a­va, in Sin­ga­pore for com­pli­cat­ed in­tra-ab­dom­i­nal in­fec­tions.

Here’s a brief overview of the rest:

• etrasi­mod (Are­na): oral mod­u­la­tor of the sphin­go­sine 1-phos­phate re­cep­tor (S1PR). In Phase III for ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis
• tani­bor­bac­tam (Ve­na­torx): in­jectable broad-spec­trum be­ta-lac­ta­mase in­hibitor. In Phase III for com­pli­cat­ed uri­nary tract in­fec­tions
• ra­linepag XR (Unit­ed): ex­tend­ed re­lease ag­o­nist of the IP re­cep­tor. In Phase III for pul­monary ar­te­r­i­al hy­per­ten­sion
• Ne­fe­con (Cal­lid­i­tas): oral for­mu­la­tion of budes­onide. In Phase III for IgA nephropa­thy
• FGF401 (No­var­tis): re­versible-co­va­lent in­hibitor of FGFR4. In Phase Ib/II for he­pa­to­cel­lu­lar car­ci­no­ma
• SPR206 (Spero): polymyx­in de­riv­a­tive de­signed to re­duce the kid­ney tox­i­c­i­ty that is seen clin­i­cal­ly with polymyx­in B and col­istin

As Congress considers whether to adopt sweeping new legislation to lower prescription drug prices across the board, the Kaiser Family Foundation is out with a new report on Monday showing how a more targeted approach on a subset of drugs might be a more efficient way to save government funds.

“This analysis shows that Medicare Part D and Part B spending is highly concentrated among a relatively small share of covered drugs, mainly those without generic or biosimilar competitors,” wrote Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at KFF, and Tricia Neuman, SVP of KFF. “Focusing drug price negotiation or reference pricing on a subset of drugs that account for a disproportionate share of spending would be an efficient use of administrative resources, though it would also leave some potential savings on the table.”

Editor’s note: Interested in following biopharma’s fast-paced IPO market? You can bookmark our IPO Tracker here.

It was another busy week in the biotech IPO market as the second quarter continues to churn out significant investment into the sector.

Recursion led the way with a $436 million raise on Friday, pricing its IPO at $18, the high end of its range. Our own John Carroll went in depth on that raise over the weekend. Also on Friday, preclinical cancer biotech Biomea Fusion debuted with a $153 million raise priced at its own high end of $17 per share. The two companies helped push the combined IPO raise for 2021 to nearly $5.5 billion.

It’s always a surprise when a court has to step in to tell the FDA that it erred in performing one of its main duties: classifying whether a medical product is drug or a device.

But that’s what the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia did on Friday, making clear to the world’s top drug regulator that Genus Medical Technologies’ contrast agent barium sulfate (also known as Vanilla SilQ) should not be considered a drug, as the FDA had said, but a medical device.

Seagen is riding the wave of two new priority reviews straight to the FDA.

The Bothell, WA-based biotech and their partners at Astellas announced Monday that two supplemental BLAs for Padcev had been accepted by US regulators. FDA has set Aug. 17 as the PDUFA date for the reviews.

“With our recent regulatory submissions, we intend to provide the highest level of clinical evidence supporting Padcev use — overall survival data from a randomized Phase III trial — and expand availability in multiple countries where there is unmet medical need,” said Astellas oncology chief Andrew Krivoshik.