With a Bris­tol My­ers Squibb en­dorse­ment in tow, Ver­sant-backed can­cer drug de­vel­op­er Re­pare Ther­a­peu­tics has set its sights on a Nas­daq de­but.

On Fri­day, the Mon­tre­al-based com­pa­ny with op­er­a­tions in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts that is yet to en­ter the clin­ic, un­veiled plans for a $100 mil­lion IPO, bank­ing on its “syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty” plat­form.

The ba­sic idea is to tar­get the ge­net­ic ba­sis of tu­mors, a com­mon idea across pre­ci­sion on­col­o­gy med­i­cines. But in­stead of tar­get­ing the per­pe­tra­tor mu­ta­tion di­rect­ly, the com­pound is de­signed to go af­ter the oth­er gene in the gene pair. The ra­tio­nale is based on the decades-old ge­net­ic prin­ci­ple that in­di­cates two mu­ta­tions are lethal on­ly when com­bined to­geth­er.

A sim­i­lar ap­proach was first so­lid­i­fied with the ap­proval of PARP in­hibitors, such as As­traZeneca and Mer­ck’s Lyn­parza, Clo­vis’ Rubra­ca and GSK’s Ze­ju­la. PARP is a pro­tein used by dam­aged cells to ini­ti­ate re­pair, and by thwart­ing it, the class of drugs is en­gi­neered to pre­vent can­cer cells from re­pair­ing them­selves, there­by cat­alyz­ing their de­struc­tion.

At Re­pare, sci­en­tists have em­ployed the use of a CRISPR-based screen­ing tool to hone in on these syn­thet­i­cal­ly lethal gene pairs and then en­gi­neered drugs to hunt them. The Re­pare ap­proach promis­es to be tu­mor-ag­nos­tic — the com­pa­ny’s lead ex­per­i­men­tal prod­uct, RP-3500, is a small mol­e­cule de­signed to block the DNA re­pair pro­tein — atax­ia telang­iec­ta­sia —  as well as an en­zyme that’s ac­ti­vat­ed by DNA repli­ca­tion stress. Clin­i­cal tri­als are an­tic­i­pat­ed to be­gin lat­er this quar­ter, and if all goes well, a Phase I/II study in the third quar­ter.

Re­pare has com­pa­ny in the field, such as its Cam­bridge neigh­bor Tan­go Ther­a­peu­tics that has CRISPR dis­cov­ered five pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams and raised $60 mil­lion in a fresh in­jec­tion of fund­ing in April. Cyteir Ther­a­peu­tics, an­oth­er ri­val, net­ted about $40 mil­lion last Oc­to­ber.

So far, 2016 formed-Re­pare has raised $135.2 mil­lion — its most re­cent cap­i­tal in­jec­tion was an $82.5 mil­lion Se­ries B fi­nanc­ing last Sep­tem­ber. The IPO fil­ing shows the com­pa­ny has pen­ciled in a $100 mil­lion IPO, but of late, the fi­nal fig­ures raised are typ­i­cal­ly far high­er.

Daniel Durocher

Days ago, Bris­tol My­ers bought in­to the dream, fork­ing over $50 mil­lion up­front and $15 mil­lion in an eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment in a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Re­pare. Pre-IPO, Ver­sant is Re­pare’s largest share­hold­er, own­ing rough­ly a 30% stake — oth­er in­vestors in­clude MPM Cap­i­tal (11.8%) and Or­biMed (11.2%).

Frank Sicheri

The ar­chi­tect of Re­pare’s tech­nol­o­gy is com­pa­ny co-founder Daniel Durocher of the Lunen­feld-Tanen­baum Re­search In­sti­tute (the re­search arm of Mount Sinai Hos­pi­tal) who is one of the first sci­en­tists who pi­o­neered the use of CRISPR to screen for syn­thet­i­cal­ly lethal gene pairs. Frank Sicheri, the oth­er co-founder, is al­so from Lunen­feld-Tanen­baum.

Eli Lilly is fronting some new cash in a space they’re quite familiar with.

The company is partnering with Japan’s Asahi Kasei Pharma on an experimental drug for chronic pain, acquiring the rights for the P2X7 receptor antagonist program dubbed AK1780. Lilly will shell out a pretty penny for the program, promising up to $410 million total should each milestone payment come to pass.

Asahi Kasei will receive an upfront sum of $20 million for the candidate. In addition, Lilly is on the hook for up to $210 million in development and regulatory milestones and another potential $180 million in sales milestones. Asahi Kasei can also obtain royalties ranging from the mid-single to low-double digits should an approved product come out of the deal.

One of the world’s leading CDMOs has launched a new technology it says will expedite a quickly-growing sect of biotech drug development: off-the-shelf, allogeneic cell therapies.

It’s been nearly a decade since the FDA approved the first use of the method that uses healthy donor cells to create a master cell bank, which is then used for specific therapies — a cord blood allogeneic treatment called Hemacord. In the years since, the use of allogeneic cells has taken off in research circles, most notably in the use of T cell therapies to target solid tumor cancers.

Nearly a year ago, as the pandemic encroached and the stock market cratered, Flagship and ARCH Venture announced three mega-funds worth a combined $2.6 billion. They wanted, ARCH’s Bob Nelsen said, to restore confidence “that there was money out there and a lot of it” to invest in biotech.

Since then, the stock market has returned — almost frighteningly so — and Nelsen has kept raising and spending cash. On Thursday, he announced a new fund, worth $1.85 billion. It’s the largest pot yet for a VC famous for its deep pockets.