De­spite a suite of in­no­va­tions in on­co­log­ic ther­a­py, metasta­t­ic can­cer re­mains one of the lead­ing killers of US pa­tients, and the un­der­ly­ing dri­vers of its growth are still lit­tle known. A West Harlem biotech is look­ing at one po­ten­tial path to solv­ing metas­ta­sis, and now it’s work­ing with a high-pro­file part­ner to speed its ef­forts.

Volas­tra has closed an ex­pand­ed $44 mil­lion Se­ries A and iced a deal with Mi­crosoft to de­vel­op new dig­i­tal tools to iden­ti­fy bio­mark­ers for can­cer metas­ta­sis based on the com­pa­ny’s work study­ing chro­mo­so­mal in­sta­bil­i­ty, the biotech said in a pair of re­leas­es Tues­day.

Lewis Cant­ley

Found­ed on sci­ence from co-founders Lewis Cant­ley, Olivi­er El­e­men­to and Samuel Bakhoum, Volas­tra is look­ing to dis­cov­er and de­vel­op nov­el drugs tar­get­ing chro­mo­so­mal in­sta­bil­i­ty, a key dri­ver in the metasta­t­ic can­cer. The biotech us­es ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to iden­ti­fy bio­mark­ers for chro­mo­so­mal in­sta­bil­i­ty “at scale,” CEO Charles Hugh-Jones told End­points News, and is work­ing to de­vel­op nov­el mol­e­cules across three broad po­ten­tial modal­i­ties: im­mune ac­ti­va­tion, syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty and CIN-path­way mod­u­la­tion.

The key there is “at scale,” and that’s the idea that sparked the part­ner­ship with Mi­crosoft. The tech gi­ant will pit its “com­put­er vi­sion” plat­form, which crunch­es da­ta sets for vi­su­al fea­tures, against Volas­tra’s grow­ing chro­mo­so­mal in­sta­bil­i­ty da­ta sets and hope­ful­ly be­gin churn­ing out bio­mark­ers soon­er than you might think.

Charles Hugh-Jones

“They’re re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in how they can ap­ply their ma­chine vi­sion al­go­rithms and we’re bring­ing to the ta­ble the chro­mo­so­mal in­sta­bil­i­ty ex­per­tise,” Hugh-Jones said. “Com­bin­ing those two, we will have by the third quar­ter of this year a ma­chine vi­sion plat­form where we bulk iden­ti­fy chro­mo­so­mal in­sta­bil­i­ty.”

With that high-pro­file deal in place, Volas­tra will al­so take a fresh round of in­vestor cash to scale its own in­ter­nal dis­cov­ery plat­form and po­ten­tial­ly be ready to start un­veil­ing lead com­pounds in the near fu­ture. The biotech cur­rent­ly has two leads un­der wraps, Hugh-Jones said, and is look­ing to get in­to first hu­man stud­ies by ear­ly 2023.

Chro­mo­so­mal in­sta­bil­i­ty is a ripe field for study giv­en its role in dri­ving metasta­t­ic can­cer, which is di­ag­nosed in about 350,000 US pa­tients each year. On­ly about a third of those re­spond to tar­get­ed or im­munother­a­pies, Volas­tra said, leav­ing the door open for a wide range of al­ter­na­tive modal­i­ties.

The $44 mil­lion round ex­pands Volas­tra’s seed fund­ing and was head­lined by new in­vestors Vi­da Ven­tures and Catalio Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, which joined a syn­di­cate that in­cludes Po­laris Part­ners, Droia Ven­tures, ARCH Ven­ture Part­ners and Quark Ven­ture.

Hugh-Jones joined the team in Sep­tem­ber, which bloomed pri­mar­i­ly from the work of Cor­nell’s Cant­ley, who dis­cov­ered the PI3K path­way in on­col­o­gy.

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The latest biotech-SPAC deal has arrived, and it’s dancing its way to Nasdaq to the tune of several hundred million dollars.

Tango Therapeutics and its CRISPR-focused search for new cancer genes is reverse merging with Boxer Capital’s blank-check company, the biotech announced Wednesday morning. With a spotlight on three lead programs, Tango expects total proceeds to equal about $353 million in the deal, which includes the roughly $167 million held in the SPAC and an additional $186 million in PIPE financing.

Back in April 2019, Amgen quietly shut down a Phase I trial for a drug named AMG 986. There was no safety concern; the molecule just didn’t hit the mark on helping the small band of heart failure patients who received it.

A small biotech, though, believes it would stand a chance in the burgeoning anti-aging field.

BioAge Labs has licensed AMG 986 — now renamed BGE-105 — with plans to parlay the existing IND into a quick Phase I trial teasing out the pharmacodynamic effects and set the stage for mid-stage tests focused on acute muscle indications.

Anand Shah has served the American public in a unique way, crisscrossing over the last two administrations between serving as an attending radiation oncologist focused on prostate cancer at NIH, serving as CMO at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, and most recently, leading the FDA’s operations on medical and scientific affairs from within the commissioner’s office.

Shah, who stepped down from the FDA in January, caught up with Endpoints News in a phone interview on Tuesday afternoon, offering his thoughts on the agency’s latest decision to pause the J&J vaccinations in the US, and reflecting on his time at an agency during this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

As co-director of an experimental cellular therapy process development and manufacturing group at UCSF specializing in T cell therapies for autoimmune conditions, Jonathan Esensten has learned a lot about the challenges involved when his group hand-fashions a cell therapy. Esensten — who was a postdoc in Wendell Lim’s lab and counts the legendary Jeffrey Bluestone as a mentor — gives them all high marks at being great at what they do, but time and again there are variations in the treatments they construct.

When Min Li took the wraps off a $100 million round for his Bob Nelsen-backed startup last December — as with most biotech CEOs when they launch — he left a couple cards unturned.

Keen to build a first-of-its-kind neuro play in China, the GlaxoSmithKline R&D vet already had a good idea of which assets he wanted to in-license for SciNeuro, conducting Zoom negotiations from the East Coast office that he’s been somewhat stuck in since JP Morgan early in the year. Now, he’s finally ready to shine a spotlight on the first program: a slate of alpha-synuclein targeted antibody therapies from Eli Lilly.