Stephen Elledge

Lea Hachi­gian, a prin­ci­pal at the Long­wood Fund, re­calls work­ing with Har­vard pro­fes­sor Stephen Elledge three years ago on the launch of TCR-fo­cused TScan Ther­a­peu­tics. Elledge ini­tial­ly set out to screen anti­gen-TCR match­es in a faster, more sys­tem­at­ic way and spent sev­en years putting to­geth­er the tech for a plat­form that could run mul­ti­ple T cell re­cep­tors against anti­gen epi­topes and pin­point the ex­act pairs that ap­pear to in­ter­act.

And last month, that project, TScan, land­ed a $100 mil­lion crossover round to con­tin­ue the work. The biotech is al­so sev­er­al months in­to a part­ner­ship with No­var­tis.

“As we were work­ing with him on TScan, we start­ed to get to know some of the oth­er work in his lab a lit­tle bit more deeply, and re­al­ly we kind of cen­tered on the Im­muneID tech­nol­o­gy,” Hachi­gian said.

This past spring, Long­wood ap­proached Elledge about form­ing a new biotech around the plat­form. And on Wednes­day, Im­muneID was born with $17 mil­lion in seed fund­ing to iden­ti­fy and tar­get the an­ti­body in­ter­ac­tions that dri­ve im­mune dis­eases. Hachi­gian, who al­so helped found TScan, is tak­ing the helm as CEO.

While TScan is fo­cused on T cell tar­gets, Im­muneID is look­ing at an­ti­body tar­gets. Its screen­ing plat­form, which uti­lizes AI tech­nol­o­gy, is de­signed to give a read­out of the tar­gets cho­sen by an­ti­bod­ies in a par­tic­u­lar pa­tient sam­ple. And every time they run the plat­form, a huge amount of da­ta is col­lect­ed on hun­dreds of thou­sands of an­ti­body in­ter­ac­tions.

“So you can imag­ine what you find are an­ti­bod­ies against virus­es if that’s what you’re in­ter­est­ed in, you find IgE an­ti­bod­ies against al­ler­gens that could cause ana­phy­lax­is, you find au­toan­ti­bod­ies that might be mark­ers of au­toim­mune dis­ease, can­cer, etc.,” Hachi­gian said.

In the case of al­ler­gies, which will be the com­pa­ny’s main fo­cus to start, a pa­tient might be mount­ing an im­prop­er an­ti­body re­sponse to a peanut. Once you know the an­ti­bod­ies and where they’re tar­get­ing on peanut pro­teins, you can in­ter­fere with that in­ter­ac­tion, Hachi­gian ex­plained.

Im­muneID’s oth­er fo­cus ar­eas will in­clude au­toim­mu­ni­ty, on­col­o­gy, and in­fec­tious dis­ease. By the end of this year, the CEO ex­pects the small five- or six-per­son com­pa­ny to grow to 10 or 12. Long­wood led the seed round, with help from Arch Ven­ture Part­ners, Pi­tan­go HealthTech, In-Q-Tel, Xfund, and oth­er undis­closed in­vestors.

“The tar­gets are al­ready there, they’re just wait­ing for us to es­sen­tial­ly… go through with our plat­form and pull them out,” Hachi­gian said.

If Novartis learned one thing from its interaction with the FDA over its latest heart failure approval for Entresto, it was that missing a primary endpoint may not be the nail in the coffin. Now, Entresto has missed again on a late-stage study in high-risk heart patients, and it’s already sowing the seeds for a path forward regardless.

Novartis’ Entresto couldn’t best standard-of-care ramipril in staving off a composite of deaths and heart failure events in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction and/or pulmonary congestion who have had a prior heart attack, according to topline data from the Phase III PARADISE-MI study revealed Saturday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

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Another day, another SPAC vying for a spot on Nasdaq.

On Wednesday, OncoSec Medical CEO Daniel O’Connor filed the S-1 paperwork for a new blank-check company he’s leading called Larkspur Health Acquisition. The former Advaxis chief penciled in a $75 million raise, with plans to offer 7.5 million shares at $10 apiece.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is cooling its jets in looking for new, potential Covid-19 treatments, at least in the near term.

An HHS spokesperson told Endpoints News via email, “to date, BARDA has obligated more than $9 billion for the development and/or purchase of 13 therapeutics, beginning in February 2020 with support to develop Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody therapeutic. Therapeutics are an important element of the COVID-19 response, and we are focused on the programs currently underway and/or in negotiation using the funds available to us.”

When Bristol Myers Squibb signed off on its $13 billion acquisition of MyoKardia back in October, it was making a big bet that lead drug mavacamten could prove a game changer in cardiac myopathy. Now, with the drug up for FDA review, Bristol Myers is backing up its case with new quality of life data.

Patients dosed with myosin inhibitor mavacamten posted a clinically significant increase in scores on the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire, a catch-all summary of symptoms and quality of life markers, over placebo at 30 weeks, according to data from the Phase III EXPLORER-HCM study presented Saturday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.