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.

Over the past few years, the promise of blocking CD47 — a “don’t eat me” signal co-opted by cancer cells — has sent drugmakers big and small into a frenzy. But one biotech is now bowing out.

Zai Lab is deprioritizing ZL-1201, its CD47 inhibitor, scrapping plans for a Phase II trial. It will now “pursue out-licensing opportunities,” the company said in its Q2 update. The decision was based on a review of the competitive landscape, it added, without going into further details.

Less than a week after HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared monkeypox a national health emergency, reports have emerged that the US plans to extend its vaccine supply by opting for a different route of administration.

Officials are expected to call for intradermal injection of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine — the only shot approved specifically for monkeypox in the US — as opposed to subcutaneous injection, unnamed sources told both the New York Times and Washington Post on Tuesday.

The FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research on Tuesday released a warning letter sent last week to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in Seattle for selling mole removal products over-the-counter, or, as the FDA explains, “introducing, delivering, or causing the introduction or delivery into interstate commerce of products that are unapproved new drugs.”

“There are no over-the-counter (OTC) drugs that can be legally sold for mole or skin tag removal, and FDA has safety concerns about drugs marketed OTC directly to consumers for these uses,” the agency said in its Aug. 4 warning.