Jean-Jacques Ga­raud

When Jean-Jacques Ga­raud left the top role in re­search and ear­ly de­vel­op­ment at Roche to build and ad­vise ear­ly-stage biotechs in his na­tive Paris, one fledg­ling quick­ly drew close to his heart.

The start­up, In­otrem, was de­vel­op­ing an im­munother­a­py to treat sep­tic shock. Hav­ing trained as a crit­i­cal care physi­cian be­fore mov­ing to Scher­ing-Plough and then No­var­tis, Ga­raud was all too fa­mil­iar with the dearth of treat­ments for sep­sis, which is dead­ly even in de­vel­oped coun­tries, claim­ing more than a quar­ter-mil­lion deaths in the US each year.

To­geth­er with co-founders Sébastien Gi­bot and Marc De­rive (De­rive did his PhD at Gi­bot’s lab and is now In­otrem’s CSO), he swift­ly gath­ered €18 mil­lion from French VCs An­dera Part­ners and Sofinno­va Part­ners, as well as the trans­fer seed fund known as In­serm and Swiss play­er Bio­Med­In­vest. But for the next round of fund­ing, Ga­raud told Phar­ma Board­room ear­li­er this year, he’d be look­ing to bring in in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors out­side of France and Eu­rope.

Marc De­rive

And bring in in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors he did. Morn­ing­side Ven­tures, which traces its roots to Hong Kong, is lead­ing In­otrem’s €39 mil­lion Se­ries B. New York-based In­vus al­so joined the syn­di­cate.

“This fi­nanc­ing val­i­dates the po­ten­tial of our tech­nol­o­gy plat­form cen­tered on the TREM-1 path­way and of our lead drug can­di­date for sep­tic shock, nan­gi­botide, which will be en­ter­ing a large Phase IIb clin­i­cal tri­al lat­er this year,” Ga­raud said in a state­ment.

Char­ac­ter­ized by dan­ger­ous­ly low blood pres­sure, sep­tic shock is the most se­vere com­pli­ca­tion of sep­sis, which oc­curs when the body mounts an over­whelm­ing re­sponse to an in­fec­tion, lead­ing to or­gan fail­ures. While an­tibi­otics can help tamp down the in­fec­tion, nei­ther it nor sup­port­ive care ad­dress­es the un­der­ly­ing shock.

In­otrem’s hy­poth­e­sis is that by in­hibit­ing TREM-1 — a re­cep­tor ex­pressed on myeloid cells — its pep­tide drug can mod­u­late the im­mune at­tack with­out com­plete­ly stop­ping the in­flam­ma­to­ry re­sponse from clear­ing harm­ful bac­te­ria.

The field is not packed, but the biotech is not alone ei­ther. Berlin-based Adrenomed is tack­ling a tar­get called adrenomedullin, while Medicxi-backed UK start­up Crit­i­cal Pres­sure reck­ons hit­ting DDAH1 is the way to go.

With the new fund­ing, In­otrem plans to launch a glob­al Phase IIb tri­al to test that the­o­ry, re­cruit­ing 450 pa­tients and test­ing two dos­es of nan­gi­botide against stan­dard of care and place­bo.

Keep­ing his phar­ma con­nec­tions close, Ga­raud has al­so se­cured a part­ner­ship with Roche on a com­pan­ion di­ag­nos­tic tool based con­cen­tra­tion of TREM-1 in pa­tients.

In ad­di­tion to sep­tic shock, In­otrem is al­so de­vel­op­ing its TREM-1 drugs in car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases and chron­ic in­flam­ma­to­ry con­di­tions.

Fewer Approvals, but Neurology Rivals Oncology and Sees Major Innovations

This report, the fourth in our Trinity Drug Index series, outlines key themes and emerging trends in the industry as we progress towards a new world of targeted and innovative products. It provides a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of novel drugs approved by the FDA in 2016, scoring each on its commercial performance, therapeutic value, and R&D investment (Table 1: Drug ranking – Ratings on a 1-5 scale).

For start-up biotechnology companies and resource stretched pharmaceutical organisations, launching a novel product can be challenging. Lean teams can make setting a launch strategy and achieving your commercial goals seem like a colossal undertaking, but can these barriers be transformed into opportunities that work to your brand’s advantage?
We spoke to Managing Consultant Frances Hendry to find out how Blue Latitude Health partnered with a fledgling subsidiary of a pharmaceutical organisation to launch an innovative product in a
complex market.
What does the launch environment look like for this product?
FH: We started working on the product at Phase II and now we’re going into Phase III trials. There is a significant unmet need in this disease area, and everyone is excited about the launch. However, the organisation is still evolving and the team is quite small – naturally this causes a little turbulence.

In 2000, about a year after the first trial data on Humira came out, a Japanese team identified a new gene that appeared to prevent GI cancer in mice: gasdermin, they called it, after the particular proteins it expressed.

Over the next decade-and-a-half, scientists found five more genes in the same family – often identified as gasdermin A, B, C, D, E and F – and yet their purpose baffled scientists. Mutations in A appeared to make mice bald (alopecia), but deleting it had no effect. Mutations in F and A were linked to deafness. Mutant E caused human cells to self-destruct.