Gary Glick, Keith Flaherty

What can a biotech en­tre­pre­neur and a top sci­en­tist come up with on a cou­ple of shared flights? Well...

Just weeks be­fore the pan­dem­ic hit the states, Gary Glick and Kei­th Fla­her­ty had a chance to spend 12 hours to­geth­er, talk­ing craft and trade on board shared flights as they head­ed to and from a board meet­ing to­geth­er.

It may have been the most fruit­ful 12 hours of Glick’s pro­duc­tive life. They cer­tain­ly found plen­ty to talk about.

Glick, a well known biotech en­tre­pre­neur and in­flam­ma­to­ry spe­cial­ist, had bumped up to ex­ec­u­tive chair at IFM Ther­a­peu­tics just weeks be­fore, af­ter run­ning through a slate of siz­able deals with some ma­jor phar­ma play­ers like No­var­tis.

Kei­th Fla­her­ty is one of the lead­ing on­col­o­gy sci­en­tists in the Boston area, which is say­ing a lot. A Har­vard med pro­fes­sor and di­rec­tor of clin­i­cal re­search at the Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Can­cer Cen­ter, he co-found­ed Loxo, which Eli Lil­ly bought out for $8 bil­lion.

To­geth­er, they’ve hatched a new biotech in Boston with a wicked name — Scor­pi­on — and plans to make waves in the can­cer field. And At­las — which was well re­ward­ed by Glick’s run at IFM — is step­ping up to help lead a $108 mil­lion mega launch round to get them on their way.

Now, about that name…

“We’re putting the sting to can­cer, so to speak,” Glick tells me. He adds: “We have a pipeline. We have a num­ber of pro­grams that we’re look­ing on that we’re very ex­cit­ed about.”

Gad­dy Getz

The mis­sion state­ment is big and bold:

[That new mon­ey] will be used to ad­vance Pre­ci­sion On­col­o­gy 2.0., the next wave in pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, with the goal of de­liv­er­ing best- and first-in-class small mol­e­cule drugs that are safe and well-tol­er­at­ed and that can pro­vide deep­er, more durable re­spons­es to many more peo­ple with can­cer.

But de­tails are in short sup­ply. Like a lot of star­tups, even with mon­ey in the bank, there’s no up­side in be­ing too spe­cif­ic too ear­ly. Not with this com­pet­i­tive land­scape.

Aside from Fla­her­ty, Glick has sur­round­ed him­self with sev­er­al top play­ers, in­clud­ing:

Gad­dy Getz: Di­rec­tor of the Can­cer Genome Com­pu­ta­tion­al Analy­sis Group at the Broad In­sti­tute of MIT and Har­vard. He di­rects bioin­for­mat­ics re­search and holds an en­dowed chair at the Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Can­cer Cen­ter.

Liron Bar-Peled

Liron Bar-Peled: An as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School and the Can­cer Cen­ter at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. His lab has made key con­tri­bu­tions to un­der­stand­ing how cells sense and re­spond to ox­ida­tive stress and de­vel­op­ing small mol­e­cule in­hibitors against dif­fi­cult-to-drug can­cer dri­vers.

And that all helped loop in the mon­ey peo­ple. Jean-François Formela at At­las is back for Glick, chip­ping in new mon­ey. Ar­jun Goy­al, co-founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Vi­da Ven­tures, is on board as a co-lead. Vi­da has plen­ty of on­col­o­gy spe­cial­ists in the mix, in­clud­ing Arie Bellde­grun. They joined up with Omega.

Pauli­na Hill

“Scor­pi­on’s de­liv­ery of Pre­ci­sion On­col­o­gy 2.0 is smart and sys­tem­at­ic. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the com­pa­ny has as­sem­bled a renowned team, built a cut­ting edge dis­cov­ery en­gine, and es­tab­lished a ro­bust pre­clin­i­cal pipeline,” said Pauli­na Hill at Omega Funds.

Abing­worth and Part­ners Health­Care In­no­va­tion al­so con­tributed to the round.

We’ll find out more about what Glick, Fla­her­ty & Co. have in mind for can­cer. Right now, the scor­pi­on is keep­ing its stinger un­der wraps. But with $100 mil­lion to play with, the game plan has to be quite de­tailed.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment calls mem­ber states to ac­tion on an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance

Members of the European Parliament have called on EU countries to develop national action plans against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), calling it a top-three priority health threat.

Parliament on Thursday announced recommendations for the fight against AMR, including national action plans that must be updated at least every two years, an EU-level database tracking AMR and antimicrobial use and increased partnership between the pharma industry, patient groups and academia.

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Andrey Zarur, GreenLight Biosciences CEO

Green­Light Bio­sciences se­cures merg­er as it looks to go pri­vate

GreenLight Bioscience, the developer and manufacturer of RNA vaccines and therapeutics, is set to be acquired.

The company announced earlier this week that it would be acquired by a group of buyers led by Fall Line Capital in a cash deal valuing GreenLight at around $45.5 million. According to a release, Fall Line and the group agreed to acquire all of the shares of the company for $0.30 per share. The deal is expected to close sometime in the third quarter of this year.

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Roche plans to di­vest from lega­cy Genen­tech man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia

Roche is planning to make some changes to its subsidiary’s manufacturing network in California.

The Swiss pharma announced Wednesday that it plans to divest from Genentech’s manufacturing facility in Vacaville, CA, around 58 miles northeast of San Francisco. According to a statement from Roche, the move is part of a “broader strategy” to bring its manufacturing capabilities in line with its future pipeline. Roche is starting the process of finding a buyer for the site but has not named any candidates yet.

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FDA lifts hold on Mol­e­c­u­lar Tem­plates’ mul­ti­ple myelo­ma tri­al af­ter less than two months

The FDA has lifted a partial clinical hold on Molecular Templates’ early-stage trial for a multiple myeloma drug, the biotech company announced Thursday morning.

Regulators had put the trial on partial hold in early April, pausing patient enrollment, following two adverse heart-related events in patients who received the highest dose of Molecular Templates’ treatment MT-0169 last year. One patient had asymptomatic grade 2 myocarditis, or heart muscle inflammation, while the other had a grade 3 cardiomyopathy. Both recovered within two months.

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Roger Perlmutter, Eikon Therapeutics CEO

Roger Perl­mut­ter builds Eikon's pipeline with deal-mak­ing flur­ry, rais­ing $106M more

Eikon Therapeutics announced three business development deals on Thursday, effectively dropping in a pipeline of cancer drugs alongside more than $100 million in fresh funding.

The Hayward, CA-based company has become one of biotech’s richest startups since its 2019 founding, having raised nearly $775 million. It’s developing a massive, automated research approach built around Nobel Prize-winning microscope science to peer inside cells and watch proteins in action. After its Series B last year, PitchBook reported a $3.02 billion valuation. And while CEO Roger Perlmutter declined to comment on that figure, he said its first tranche of nearly $106 million in Series C funding is a “meaningful step-up to our Series B valuation.”

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Peter van de Sande, Synaffix CEO

Lon­za shells out $107M cash to snap up Synaf­fix and its ADC plat­form

After lining up a string of partnerships over the years, Dutch antibody-drug conjugate specialist Synaffix has found a new home: Lonza, the contract development and manufacturing giant.

Lonza is paying about $107 million (€100 million) in cash to acquire Synaffix, with up to $64 million (€60 million) in “additional performance-based consideration” on the table. Synaffix’s ADC tech platform will now become part of Lonza’s offering for biopharma clients, lending its bioconjugate technologies to not just ADCs but also targeted gene therapy, immune cell engagers and other applications.

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Who's con­fi­dent­ly in­vest­ing in biotech star­tups dur­ing these tense days? We've got some an­swers

We’ve got a changeup to our event schedule in Boston next week, where we’ll be doing a mix of live/streaming events at our base at The Seaport Hotel as part of a two-day lineup of webinars, virtual firesides and a cocktail hour Q&A with a veteran of the biotech financing scene.

The 9:30-10:30 am ET live slot on Tuesday, June 6, will now feature a panel conversation on the current state of affairs for VC investing in biotech, focusing on what startups are getting cash — and how. Alaa Halawa, head of US ventures at Mubadala, is confirmed, along with Brian Goodman at MPM and Geoff von Maltzahn, a general partner at Moderna-buoyed Flagship. I have a couple of other invites out and will let you know how that plays out.

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As­traZeneca gives up on late-stage IL-23 drug due to tri­al de­lays, com­pet­i­tive land­scape

AstraZeneca is shelving an IL-23 antibody that’s been through a winding journey around pharma — including stops at Amgen and Allergan — and putting an end to Phase II and III trials testing the drug for inflammatory bowel disease.

“The decision to discontinue brazikumab’s IBD development follows a recent review of brazikumab’s development timeline and the context of a competitive landscape that has continued to evolve,” a press release reads.

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