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.

The race to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus continues to heat up, as the European Commission’s pilot R&D arm taps French biotech Osivax to head up its unique approach to the research.

Aiming to develop a universal jab for the flu and Covid-19, Osivax secured around $20 million in “blended financing” from the European Innovation Council. About $3 million comes from a Covid-19 “accelerator grant” and will go toward completing Osivax’s signature flu vaccine, dubbed OVX836 and currently in Phase IIa. The rest will be included as part of Osivax’s Series B funding, which aims to launch the Phase IIb portion of the study.

Two years after it first emerged from stealth mode, Flagship’s Foghorn Therapeutics has nabbed its first Big Pharma partner as Merck signs on to the biotech’s vision of drugging the very shape of DNA.

The deal, worth up to $425 million but with the upfront cash undisclosed, comes as Foghorn nears a pivot to a clinical stage biotech. The Cambridge-based company has added nearly 60 staffers from the 25 it had when it first emerged out of Flagship and, CEO Adrian Gottschalk said, they have finally refined the screening technology at the heart of the company, with plans to file their first IND towards the end of the year.

The pandemic stock market has proven fruitful for virtually any type of biotech. Now a 7-year-old cell therapy startup will see how much it can yield for a company that specializes in fighting viruses.

AlloVir, a company that until 2019 largely lived off grant money, has filed for a $100 million IPO to back its line of off-the-shelf, virus-fighting T cells. Although in normal circumstances, $100 million could be a solid return for a biotech that got its first major round of funding only last year, we’ll have to wait to see how much the company ultimately earns. As Covid-19 has sent investor money scurrying to almost anyone in drug development, every single biotech to go public this year has prized above their midpoint or upsized their offering, according to Renaissance Capital, sometimes dramatically so.