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

Back in 2018, Hans Schambye raised $90 million to kick off a late-stage trial that could put Galecto Biotech’s lead drug on the final stretch toward approval for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Two years later, he’s collected another $64 million to complete it.

The Copenhagen-based company has managed to continue recruitment for the 450-patient trial in spite of the pandemic, the CEO told Endpoints News, with data expected by the middle of 2022.

Peter Marks appeared before a virtual SVB Leerink audience yesterday and said that his staff at FDA’s CBER is on the verge of working around the clock. Manufacturing inspections, policy work and sponsor communications have all been pushed down the to-do list so that they can be responsive to Covid-related interactions. And the agency’s objective right now? “To save as many lives as we can,” Marks said, likening the mortality on the current outbreak as equivalent to “a nuclear bomb on a small city.”

It’s another day of hauling cash in the biopharma world as four more IPOs priced Friday and a fifth filed its initial paperwork.

The biggest offering comes from PMV Pharma, an oncology biotech focusing on p53 mutations, which raised $211.8 million after pricing shares at $18 apiece. Prelude Therapeutics, developing PRMT5 inhibitors for rare cancers, was next with a $158 million raise, pricing shares at $19 each. Graybug Vision raised $90 million after pricing at $16 per share for its wet AMD candidates, and breast cancer biotech Greenwich Lifesciences brought up the rear with a small, $7 million raise after pricing shares at $5.75.

Days after J&J dosed the first participants of its Phase III ENSEMBLE trial, the pharma giant has detailed the early-stage data that gave them confidence in a single-dose regimen.

Testing two dose levels either as a single dose or in a two-dose schedule spaced by 56 days in, the scientists from Janssen, the J&J subsidiary developing its vaccine, reported that the low dose induced a similar immune response as the high dose. The interim Phase I/IIa results were posted in a preprint on medRxiv.