A Bay Area biotech an­nounced three new de­vel­op­ments that have been in the works in re­cent months, hop­ing that all have a strong chance at pro­pelling the com­pa­ny for­ward.

The first and newest de­vel­op­ment is the fi­nanc­ing, as Oc­tant — head­ed up by for­mer UCLA pro­fes­sor Sri Ko­suri and found­ed in 2017 — raised $80 mil­lion in a Se­ries B round. It’s the biotech’s largest round to date, and more than dou­bles all its past fundrais­ing com­bined, bring­ing its to­tal fi­nanc­ing so far to $115 mil­lion. Ko­suri told End­points News that the fund­ing gives Oc­tant, which cur­rent­ly has around 50 em­ploy­ees, a cash run­way of two to three years.

While the round was led by biotech VC Catalio Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, pre­vi­ous and new in­vestors hopped on­to the round, in­clud­ing Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, Allen & Co., 50 Years VC and An­dreessen Horowitz Bio Fund.

Ram­sey Hom­sany

As for what the com­pa­ny plans to do with that mon­ey, co-founders Ko­suri and Ram­sey Hom­sany said that their goal is three-pronged over the next few years: push their two lead­ing drug can­di­dates in­to the clin­ic, scale the size and ca­pa­bil­i­ty of their plat­form any­where from five- to ten­fold and start de­vel­op­ing an­oth­er five to 10 new drug can­di­dates.

So far, Oc­tant’s two lead can­di­dates, still in pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, go af­ter au­to­so­mal dom­i­nant re­tini­tis pig­men­tosa — a rare form of blind­ness marked by dam­age to the reti­na — and re­cep­tors linked to me­tab­o­lism and obe­si­ty, re­spec­tive­ly. Ko­suri said that Oc­tant has no de­fin­i­tive time­frame for when it ex­pects to have the drugs in clin­i­cal tri­als.

Oc­tant’s plat­form fo­cus­es on syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing small mol­e­cules and test­ing them through hu­man cell lines, bi­o­log­i­cal as­says and ma­chine learn­ing soft­ware.

Sec­ond­ly, Bris­tol My­ers de­cid­ed to team up with Oc­tant in a mul­ti-year col­lab­o­ra­tion deal. While Ko­suri de­clined to give fi­nan­cial specifics, it had been in the works for close to a year and was fi­nal­ized in De­cem­ber. Ko­suri added that the deal was un­re­lat­ed to Bris­tol My­ers’ in­vest­ment in the afore­men­tioned Se­ries B.

The part­ner­ship with Bris­tol My­ers is us­ing Oc­tant’s tech­nol­o­gy to, as Ko­suri put it, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly test thou­sands of amino acids in hu­man cell lines, go­ing through as many mu­ta­tions as pos­si­ble. Oc­tant and Bris­tol My­ers will ap­ply the tech­nol­o­gy to a set of un­spec­i­fied im­munol­o­gy tar­gets.

Rick Ar­tis

And the fi­nal change for the biotech is on the per­son­nel side. Oc­tant brought on its first chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer, Rick Ar­tis, and added bio­chemist Feng Zhang to its sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­so­ry board. Ar­tis, who orig­i­nal­ly start­ed out as a re­searcher at Syn­tex and Genen­tech, worked at Elan, Cho­rum and An­nex­on be­fore com­ing to Oc­tant Bio. Ko­suri told End­points that Oc­tant want­ed Ar­tis’s ex­per­tise in com­pu­ta­tion­al chem­istry.

“We def­i­nite­ly want­ed more drug de­vel­op­ment ex­per­tise in the com­pa­ny. You know, we clear­ly need­ed it, es­pe­cial­ly as the mol­e­cules that we were run­ning in ear­ly dis­cov­ery days are kind of mov­ing to­wards larg­er an­i­mal stud­ies and mov­ing to­wards the clin­ic. But we al­so want­ed some­one with ex­per­tise in this new kind of small mol­e­cule and drug dis­cov­ery plat­form,” Ko­suri said.

The CEO added that Ar­tis got con­nect­ed with Oc­tant through Mark Mur­cko, the found­ing CSO at Dew­point Ther­a­peu­tics. Mur­cko al­so hap­pens to be on the board at Oc­tant, and knew Ar­tis through grad school, with both of them get­ting their PhDs at Yale in or­gan­ic chem­istry.

Ko­suri al­so said he and Zhang have known each oth­er for a few years — and Ko­suri thought that Zhang would be a great ad­di­tion to Oc­tant’s syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy work and help guide the com­pa­ny for­ward in that space.

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

Incyte touted an accelerated approval for its PD-1 retifanlimab in a rare skin cancer on Wednesday, roughly a year and a half after the drug suffered a rejection in squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCAC).

Retifanlimab, marketed as Zynyz, was approved for metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a fast-growing skin cancer typically characterized by a single, painless nodule. It’s roughly 40 times rarer than melanoma, according to the nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation — but incidence is growing, particularly among older adults, Incyte said in its announcement.