Maureen Hillenmeyer, Hexagon Bio CEO

Us­ing AI to se­quence fun­gi genomes for can­cer treat­ments, Hexa­gon Bio nets $47M in Se­ries A

A Stan­ford spin­out ex­plor­ing how fun­gi can be se­quenced to dis­cov­er new med­i­cines in on­col­o­gy and in­fec­tious dis­eases now has sig­nif­i­cant­ly more cash to do so.

Ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing, Hexa­gon Bio an­nounced the clos­ing of their Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing, pulling in $47 mil­lion from a group of in­vestors led by The Col­umn Group. The round, which al­so saw par­tic­i­pa­tion from 8VC and Two Sig­ma Ven­tures, will go to­ward cre­at­ing a pro­pri­etary ge­nomics data­base as well as build­ing out a drug dis­cov­ery team to de­vel­op the new com­pounds. Hexa­gon brought on Tod Smeal as its new CSO af­ter he served in the same po­si­tion at Lil­ly Re­search Labs.

“This is go­ing to take us in­to this next phase from com­pa­ny build­ing,” CEO Mau­reen Hil­len­mey­er told End­points News. “We’ve built this great plat­form, but now we’re at a stage where we’re re­al­ly fo­cused on tak­ing mol­e­cules to­wards the clin­ic.”

The tech that Hexa­gon has de­vel­oped aims to op­ti­mize the search for nat­ur­al prod­ucts with­in fun­gi that can serve as foun­da­tions for can­cer treat­ments, Hil­len­mey­er said. His­tor­i­cal­ly, such search­es have been “brute force” meth­ods re­quir­ing painstak­ing ef­forts to se­quence.

But Hexa­gon wants to pair da­ta min­ing with drug dis­cov­ery in or­der to find such nat­ur­al prod­ucts, al­so known as sec­ondary metabo­lites. Fun­gi pro­duce sec­ondary metabo­lites as self-de­fense mech­a­nisms, pro­tect­ing them­selves from dis­ease. Hil­len­mey­er’s goal is to ap­ply an AI al­go­rithm to se­quence and sift through mas­sive amounts of genome da­ta to try to de­ter­mine what oth­er fun­gi nat­u­ral­ly cul­ti­vate metabo­lites use­ful in even­tu­al can­cer ther­a­pies.

Smeal com­pared the task to check­ing out am­a­teur base­ball play­ers to draft for a cham­pi­onship team. The play­ers, or the metabo­lites, are all out there wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered, while the scouts and front of­fices — Hexa­gon’s plat­form and drug dis­cov­ery team, in this in­stance — try to de­ter­mine which have the most po­ten­tial.

“What’s ex­cit­ing about it is that, in the past, there’s al­ready been a lot of suc­cess in de­vel­op­ing drugs based on nat­ur­al prod­ucts but it was re­al­ly a non-sys­tem­at­ic ap­proach,” Smeal said. “Mau­reen’s team is in the process of go­ing through and sam­pling a huge di­ver­si­ty of the pos­si­ble agents that are out there. So it’s sort of a new fron­tier, but it’s be­ing done in a sys­tem­at­ic and ef­fi­cient way.”

Tod Smeal

Metabo­lites from fun­gi have been pro­duced be­fore, most no­tably peni­cillin in ad­di­tion to cho­les­terol-re­duc­ing statins. But while a rev­o­lu­tion­ary an­tibi­ot­ic, peni­cillin was dis­cov­ered by ac­ci­dent in the 1920s, and it took years for re­searchers to ful­ly se­quence the genomes used in statin-based med­i­cines.

That’s where Hexa­gon hopes the da­ta min­ing will pro­vide a huge boon, by cut­ting down the bulk search process it­self and get­ting pro­grams in­to the clin­ic at a faster clip.

“There’s about 5 mil­lion fun­gal genomes on the earth, of which on­ly about 5,000 have been se­quenced,” Hil­len­mey­er said. “Each of those genomes con­tains a huge amount of da­ta that we have to sift through to find what we call the nee­dle in the haystack: drugs that are use­ful for peo­ple.”

As of now, Hexa­gon says it’s too ear­ly to de­ter­mine what any treat­ment might end up look­ing like. Whether the com­pa­ny de­vel­ops an IV-based drug or a once-a-day pill, those de­ci­sions are still up in the air and will de­pend on what tar­gets the com­pa­ny ul­ti­mate­ly goes af­ter.

But one thing’s for cer­tain: Hexa­gon, be­liev­ing in its tech, is not go­ing to be picky.

“We’re fo­cused on on­col­o­gy, but ini­tial­ly we’re go­ing to be work­ing in an­ti-in­fec­tives and on­col­o­gy,” Smeal said. “We’re go­ing to be very op­por­tunis­tic, so de­pend­ing on what comes out of the plat­form, if there’s op­por­tu­ni­ties in oth­er ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas, we will prob­a­bly ex­plore them as well.”

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

Andy Plump, Takeda R&D chief (Jeff Rumans for Endpoints News)

What kind of PhI­Ib da­ta is worth $4B cash? Take­da’s Andy Plump has some thoughts on that

A few months back, when Takeda caused jaws to drop with its eye-watering $4 billion cash upfront for a mid-stage TYK2 drug from Nimbus, it had already taken a deep dive on the solid Phase IIb data Nimbus had assembled from its dose-ranging study in psoriasis.

Now, it’s rolling that data out, eager to demonstrate what inspired the global biopharma to go long in a neighboring, but new, disease arena for the pipeline. And the most avid students of the numbers will likely be at Bristol Myers Squibb, who will have a multi-year head start on pioneering the TYK2 space with Sotyktu (deucravacitinib) as Takeda makes its lunge for best-in-class status.

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No­vo Nordisk re­mains un­der UK scruti­ny as MHRA con­ducts its own re­view in 'in­cred­i­bly rare' case

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is now reviewing Novo Nordisk’s marketing violation that resulted in its loss of UK trade group membership last week. Novo Nordisk was suspended on Thursday from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) for two years after an investigation by its regulatory arm found the pharma broke its conduct rules.

MHRA said on Tuesday that its review of the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) investigation is standard practice. An MHRA spokesperson emphasized in an email to Endpoints News that the situation with Novo Nordisk is “incredibly rare” while also noting ABPI took “swift and proportionate action.”

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FDA in­di­cates will­ing­ness to ap­prove Bio­gen ALS drug de­spite failed PhI­II study

Ahead of Wednesday’s advisory committee hearing to discuss Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen, the FDA appeared open to approving the drug, newly released briefing documents show.

Citing the need for flexibility in a devastating disease like ALS, regulators signaled a willingness to consider greenlighting tofersen based on its effect on a certain protein associated with ALS despite a failed pivotal trial. The documents come after regulatory flexibility was part of the same rationale the agency expressed when approving an ALS drug last September from Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, indicating the FDA’s openness to approving new treatments for the disease.

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Chat­G­PT with phar­ma da­ta de­buts for med­ical meet­ings, be­gin­ning with AACR

What do you get when you combine ChatGPT generative AI technology with specific pharma and clinical datasets? A time-saving tool that can answer questions about medical conference abstracts and clinical findings in seconds in one new application from ZoomRx called FermaGPT.

ZoomRx is debuting a public version of its generative AI product specifically for medical conferences beginning this week for the upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting that runs April 14-19.

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Vipin Garg, Altimmune CEO

Al­tim­mune’s shares halved af­ter in­ter­im look at PhII weight loss drug da­ta

Altimmune’s attempt to catch up to Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 drugs hit an investor snag Tuesday after the biotech shared interim Phase II weight loss data.

The Maryland biotech’s pemvidutide is a GLP-1/glucagon dual receptor agonist meant to activate GLP-1 receptors to squash appetite and glucagon to ramp up energy use. The 2.4 mg dose showed a placebo-adjusted weight loss of 9.7% at week 24 of 48, which Jefferies analysts said would be comparable to Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide (Wegovy) and Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide (Mounjaro).

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FDA warns Proc­ter & Gam­ble over NyQuil la­bel's in­gre­di­ent list­ings

The FDA on Tuesday released a warning letter sent earlier this month to the Mason, OH-based site of Procter & Gamble Manufactura, raising questions about the list of ingredients on the label and in the electronic filing.

The warning says that for P&G’s over-the-counter Vicks Nyquil Severe Hot Remedy Cold and Flu Plus Congestion, there’s a “mismatched” list of active ingredients between the labeling and the electronic listing file. The listing file for the active ingredients did not match the active ingredients in the electronic file.

FTC says patent bat­tle over Parkin­son's drug could have 'sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tion­s' for pa­tients

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.

Harpreet Singh, Immatics CEO

Im­mat­ics an­nounces mul­ti­ple pipeline changes with lat­est fi­nan­cial re­sults

The T-cell biotech Immatics is looking to make some changes to its pipeline.

Immatics released its 2022 financial results on Tuesday and announced that it’s planning to discontinue its program for IMA201, an experimental cell therapy for solid tumors that express the antigens known as MAGE4/8. It plans to shift focus to IMA401, a TCR bispecific which goes after the same target.

The German-based biotech said it will treat the remaining patients enrolled in the program before the discontinuation. No other reasons were given for the discontinuation. Endpoints News reached out to Immatics for more details but did not receive a response by press time.

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