On Thurs­day, three re­searchers an­nounced they had start­ed up a new im­munother­a­py biotech called LTZ Ther­a­peu­tics, short for “Lift To Zenith,” and launched with a mod­est raise they’re call­ing a “pre-Se­ries A.” In to­tal, it’s a $17 mil­lion round, led by K2 Ven­ture Part­ners and as­sist­ed by Qim­ing Ven­ture Part­ners and Tigermed.

Robert Li

There are few de­tails so far, but the com­pa­ny is mak­ing an ini­tial im­pres­sion thanks to a di­rect con­nec­tion to Genen­tech.

LTZ Ther­a­peu­tics, with of­fices in Chi­na, Cal­i­for­nia and Ger­many, has three co-founders: Robert Li, Jian­hui Zhou and Mar­tin Tred­er. Li, the CEO, has had a lengthy ca­reer in phar­ma, hav­ing worked for No­var­tis, Roche, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb and Genen­tech.

While at Genen­tech for five years, Li had worked his way up to im­munol­o­gy ther­a­peu­tic area lead, safe­ty as­sess­ment be­fore go­ing out to Vir Biotech­nol­o­gy, the Glax­o­SmithK­line part­ner known for their Covid-19 mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body sotro­vimab. And be­fore Li of­fi­cial­ly start­ed work­ing on form­ing LTZ back in Jan­u­ary, he was the CEO of Lin­ton­Pharm, a Chi­nese on­col­o­gy biotech.

Jian­hui Zhou

Li worked with Zhou at Genen­tech, who will now serve as the SVP of bi­o­log­ics dis­cov­ery and CTO at LTZ. Zhou spent eight years at the Roche sub­sidiary as a se­nior re­searcher, spe­cial­iz­ing in an­ti­body en­gi­neer­ing.

The fi­nal co-founder, Tred­er, has most re­cent­ly spent time as the CSO at mul­ti­ple biotechs in the last few years. While in­fo on his role at LTZ is yet un­con­firmed, Tred­er worked at Ar­ju­na Ther­a­peu­tics, Af­fimed and CT At­lantic. Af­fimed had pre­vi­ous­ly signed a deal with Genen­tech in 2018 to de­vel­op NK cell en­gagers for a whop­ping $5 bil­lion in mile­stones.

Tred­er left Af­fimed the fol­low­ing year to pur­sue oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing a stint as an in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant, be­fore join­ing Ar­ju­na in 2020.

Mar­tin Tred­er

Mem­bers of LTZ’s new sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­so­ry board al­so have his­to­ry at Genen­tech, and LTZ named three of them: for­mer VP of pro­tein sci­ences Sarah Hy­mowitz, for­mer VP of re­search and ear­ly de­vel­op­ment Greg Cos­ma, and for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of on­col­o­gy bio­mark­er de­vel­op­ment Lukas Am­ler.

De­spite the scant de­tails on com­pa­ny plans, here is what we know: The com­pa­ny is look­ing at can­cer as an ini­tial start­ing point — along with oth­er un­named dis­eases.

The biotech said in a state­ment that the funds from the fi­nanc­ing will be used to de­vel­op the com­pa­ny’s three-pronged plat­form, es­tab­lish its ini­tial pipeline and to fur­ther build LTZ’s op­er­a­tions team. That ‘three-pronged plat­form,’ Li said in a state­ment, is to re­duce im­muno­sup­pres­sion, re-pro­gram in­nate im­mu­ni­ty and mod­u­late adap­tive im­mu­ni­ty.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”