Tyra co-founders Todd Harris (L) and Daniel Bensen

Why do some tar­get­ed can­cer ther­a­pies stop work­ing? For Tyra, that's the $106M ques­tion

Tar­get­ed can­cer ther­a­pies can be quite ef­fec­tive. Un­til, for some pa­tients, the can­cer mu­tates, and the treat­ment stops work­ing.

“It’s not un­like re­sis­tance in an­tibi­otics,” said Todd Har­ris, an MIT grad and for­mer NIH fel­low. “The can­cer is mu­tat­ing a lot. It’s un­der a lot of pres­sure.”

Of­ten­times, that mu­ta­tion can be as sim­ple as a sin­gle amino acid shift­ing, es­sen­tial­ly block­ing the bind­ing site of a drug. And when that hap­pens, Har­ris said, you need new chem­istry that binds to the pro­tein dif­fer­ent­ly, avoid­ing the mu­tat­ed site.

That’s what Har­ris launched Tyra Bio­sciences to do — and on Wednes­day, the two-year-old biotech un­veiled a $106 mil­lion Se­ries B round for its push to­ward the clin­ic.

“Our goal is to de­sign drugs that are re­al­ly ef­fec­tive against the pro­tein and are still ef­fec­tive when that mu­ta­tion oc­curs,” said Har­ris, the com­pa­ny’s co-founder and CEO.

To do so, Tyra — named af­ter Tyr, the Norse god of war — us­es its x-ray crys­tal­log­ra­phy plat­form dubbed SNAP. The tech­nique isn’t new, Har­ris said. It in­volves shoot­ing x-ray beams to dis­cov­er the three-di­men­sion­al struc­ture of a par­tic­u­lar pro­tein. What dif­fer­en­ti­ates Tyra, though, is an in-house team that col­lects the so-called SNAP­shots two to five times a week — giv­ing the team an atom-by-atom look at how a drug is bind­ing to a spe­cif­ic pro­tein.

“We can lit­er­al­ly look at the types of in­ter­ac­tions that are mak­ing one mol­e­cule work bet­ter than an­oth­er, and then con­tin­ue to op­ti­mize and re­fine the de­signs of new mol­e­cules to ex­ploit, you know, a find­ing or a sur­prise that we get when we look at how this is ex­act­ly bind­ing to the pro­tein,” Har­ris said.

Har­ris has yet to re­lease which tar­gets the team is go­ing af­ter, but said they plan on nom­i­nat­ing a can­di­date this year which they hope to en­ter in­to the clin­ic next year. He plans on us­ing the Se­ries B funds to ad­vance the lead pro­gram and “sev­er­al fol­low-on pro­grams.”

When Tyra reeled in a $50 mil­lion Se­ries A in Jan­u­ary 2020, the team com­prised four peo­ple. Now, the com­pa­ny has 15 full-time staffers. Up­on an­nounc­ing the Se­ries B, Har­ris al­so shared news of two new C-suite ap­point­ments and the pro­mo­tion of Robert Hud­kins to CTO.

Hi­roo­mi Ta­da, whose re­sume in­cludes roles at In­cyte, Glax­o­SmithK­line and As­traZeneca, is join­ing Tyra as CMO. And Piyush Pa­tel, who worked with Hud­kins for a num­ber of years at Cephalon, is com­ing aboard as chief of de­vel­op­ment.

“We’re hav­ing a lot of fun. It’s re­al­ly an ex­cep­tion­al team, and a re­al­ly im­por­tant prob­lem we’re seek­ing to solve,” Har­ris said.

The ar­ti­cle has been up­dat­ed to clar­i­fy that x-ray crys­tal­log­ra­phy in­volves x-ray beams.

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.

Alaa Halawaa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

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'Band­ing to­geth­er': 50 fe­male biotech ex­ec­u­tives lay out plans for board di­ver­si­ty, new com­pa­nies and men­tor­ing founders

Earlier this month, during the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, Angie You recalled the speed with which female biotech CEOs were helping each other connect with bankers, get their wires through and assuage concerns during a financial implosion.

This past weekend, 50 of about 125 women who are part of that Slack group and a broader coalition self-dubbed the Biotech Sisterhood met in person in Cancun for the second rendition of an annual summit connecting female biotech CEOs. The attendance list doubled that of the inaugural gathering in Arizona 12 months ago.

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Flare Therapeutics biochemists Yong Li (L) and Valerie Vivat

A $123M Flare will get Third Rock on­col­o­gy biotech in­to the clin­ic this year

Flare Therapeutics will start its first human trial this year with an investigational urothelial cancer drug after pulling together a $123 million Series B from Big Pharmas, VCs and its incubator, Third Rock Ventures.

Launched in 2021 on the idea that a biotech could finally succeed at drugging the much-sought-after but stubborn transcription factor, Flare Therapeutics said Wednesday it is now primed for the clinic after closing its large financing haul earlier this year. The raise is a relatively stark figure in a tough startup financing environment but further buoys the upbeat signals coming out of other Third Rock biotechs in recent weeks, including the $200 million CARGO Therapeutics and $100 million Rapport Therapeutics rounds.

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No­var­tis touts sev­en years of dura­bil­i­ty da­ta for Zol­gens­ma

The same day that Roche touted positive durability and safety data for its spinal muscular atrophy drug Evrysdi, Novartis also made a splash with its multi-million dollar gene therapy for the disease.

Novartis rolled out interim data from two long-term follow-up studies Monday at the 2023 Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Clinical and Scientific Conference. In the first study, LT-001, all children in the trial that were treated after showing symptoms of SMA “maintained all previously achieved motor milestones” up to 7.5 years after being dosed. The average time since Zolgensma was given was 6.86 years.

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Rohan Palekar, 89bio CEO

89bio’s PhII da­ta add to quick suc­ces­sion of NASH read­outs as field seeks turn­around

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

Francesco Marincola, newly-appointed Sonata Therapeutics CSO

Kite's head of re­search leaves for Flag­ship start­up Sonata

Another leader is departing Kite Pharma, and will to spend the “last part” of his career exploring how cancer evades the immune system.

Kite’s senior VP and global head of cell therapy research Francesco Marincola left the Gilead CAR-T unit last week for Sonata Therapeutics. Flagship last May unveiled the startup, which was pieced together from two fledgling biotechs Inzen and Cygnal Therapeutics. As CSO, Marincola will lead Sonata’s push to reprogram cancer cells to make them more immunogenic.

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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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Roche and Lil­ly team up to de­vel­op blood test to de­tect ear­ly signs of Alzheimer's

Eli Lilly is teaming up with Roche to help develop a blood test to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease and determine whether a patient should go for further confirmatory testing.

Roche’s Elecsys Amyloid Plasma Panel (EAPP) measures pTau 181 protein assay and APOE E4 assay in human blood plasma – elevations in pTau 181 are present in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, while the presence of APO E4 is the most common genetic risk factor for the disease.

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