Valen­z­aBio's on­col­o­gy is­land of mis­fit toys snares $70M af­ter toil­ing be­hind the scenes for months

David Maizen­berg’s imag­i­na­tion sparked when he came across a mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body from Can­cer Re­search UK’s re­ject pile.

The CD19-tar­get­ing mAb, orig­i­nal­ly dis­cov­ered by Mer­ck Serono, didn’t per­form as well as the or­ga­ni­za­tion hoped against B cell ma­lig­nan­cies. But it could have val­ue, Maizen­berg hy­poth­e­sized, in au­toim­mune dis­ease.

The life sci­ences con­sul­tant and mar­keter en­tered talks with Can­cer Re­search UK in the sum­mer of 2019 about li­cens­ing the can­di­date — and in De­cem­ber, he and Patrick Crutch­er (a for­mer as­so­ciate of Mar­tin Shkre­li) launched Valen­z­aBio to “find a bet­ter home” for for­mer on­col­o­gy can­di­dates in au­toim­mune and in­flam­ma­to­ry in­di­ca­tions.

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